Bill Gates Defends Google's Censorship In China

worb writes "At the World Economic Forum today, Bill Gates defended Google's actions in China and told delegates that the internet 'is contributing to Chinese political engagement' as 'access to the outside world is preventing more censorship'. There was no reason for technology companies not to do business in China, he argued."

Comments

Re:Defends _Googles_ actions?

[aprilsound]

Everyone seems to be a bit confused about this. Google (and I assume MSN and Yahoo!) are only censoring google.cn results. Google.com is unfiltered, assuming you can get to it from China, but Google has no part in filtering that out. The google.cn servers are IN CHINA. So Google has two choices, filter, or have their servers promptly shutdown. This is about improving service to China, and to do that, they have to censor google.cn. There is no choice here, if there is going to be a local, accessible google, then it must be filtered. If Chinese users can get to google.com, then they can see the unfiltered results. Google even tells them on google.cn that some results are filtered. They can't do more than that.

Re:Exactly

[Millenniumman]

Because people are free to be associated with corporations or to not be associated. In the U.S., I can start an organization in which I am dictator, king, deity, etc. But no one has to be in it, and generally the greatest consequence of disobeying me will be removal from my organization. Corporations don't have to be democratic because being an employee or customer of one is optional.

History Always Repeats Itself

[Sundroid]

According to Wikipedia, there are 63 million card-carrying Communist Party members in China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_C hina), out of the entire population of 1.3 billion. In other words, less than 5% of the population are lording over the other 95% in a country that the Constitution stipulates that only one party, namely Chinese Communist Party, can govern the nation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_pa rties_in_China).

During the period of Apartheid in South Africa, American companies that did business with the white-minority government used similar rationale to justify their investments in South Africa. Their basic argument was that if they did not go into South Africa, poor black South Africans would suffer. Most people did not buy their argument then, and those few who did were in the camp of "look, business is business, there's nothing wrong in trying to make a buck". The only saving grace for Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergy Brin, et al, is that people do have short memories.

Something I learned today...

[pomo monster]

MSN and Yahoo! behave much worse, from a do-no-evil POV. Consider this writeup in the Economist:

Google has not entirely capitulated in China. It has pared back the services it offers--no e-mail accounts, for example--so that it doesn't put itself in the position where it might have to violate users' privacy. It has also arranged to tell users when search results have been withheld--though the Chinese authorities could always reconsider the arrangement. At the same time, in America, Google has taken a healthy stand against the DoJ, refusing to give the government what it seeks.

Google's rivals have been more accommodating. Yahoo! last year revealed the identity of a Chinese e-mail account-holder, who is now in prison for exposing information the government wanted kept secret. Microsoft's MSN service prohibits words such as "democracy" from being used as headlines on Chinese blogs. In America, AOL, MSN and Yahoo! all handed their data over to the justice department.

Yet western firms faced with engagement or isolation are right to think that being in China leads to greater openness than if they stayed away. Indeed, the very controversies that have cropped up about censorship and suppression are symptomatic of the ways in which free speech is greater now than in the past, thanks to the internet. And, so long as the DoJ's data is anonymous, privacy is not strictly in question.

Now don't get me wrong. I dislike Google; I think their products and services are in poor taste. But certainly, the company deserves better than the slamming it's getting here on Slashdot, and I don't doubt they're at least partially motivated by the hope that they're working to improve things in China. If it was purely about profit, after all, they'd have opened Gmail to Chinese citizens (or have they already, contrary to the article?).

Re:Exactly

[SIGALRM]

Free Software stands by this principle too

You may remember, in 1999 Eric Raymond started an interesting debate on the parallels between communism (referring to China) and F/OSS... you can read it here, oddly enough referred by google.cn.

Re:Still wondering

[ajwitte]

http://www.google.com/intl/zh-CN/

Re:Google just made a stunning announcement

[humphrm]

Think about it. Your comment may have been intended as humorous, but the opposite side is more likely true. Bill Gates, whether he recognizes that he's evil or not, surely knows that when Google says "Do No Evil," they are contrasting themselves from him.

In one fell swoop, Bill Gates has now placed Google into the same group he is in. From his perspective, if he's evil, so be it... now he's in good company. Bill Gates may have just precipitated the destruction of it's arch nemesis, Google.