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Google Stands Ground on Google.cn
nmccart writes "Google gave testimony on Friday to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations. They discussed their decision to build google.cn in China. Elliot Schrage, the vice president for global communications and public affairs at Google describes how these China-based servers fit in to Google's mantra of 'Don't be evil.' Google hopes to use this as an opportunity to help bring global censorship into the spotlight of American politics. Will it work?"
A synopsis of his (Elliot Schrage's) comments.
"At the outset, I want to acknowledge what I hope is obvious:
Figuring out how to deal with China has been a difficult exercise for Google."
And then 5 or 6 pages of his saying that Google capitulated to Chinese demands.
Do no evil, indeed
Although this may be an unpopular viewpoint here - Google did what they had to do. However they did it reluctantly. As they pointed out they have to follow the laws of the country they're in. Regarding censorship - there are ways around the GFC and people benefit from even the censored version of Google compared to nothing at all.
Video Game cheats, hints a
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&c2coff=1&q=t iananmen&spell=1&sa=N&tab=wi
e n&btnG=Google+%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&sa=N&tab=wi
http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananm
Google hopes to use this as an opportunity to help bring global censorship into the spotlight of American politics.
Yeah, I can do something that benefits me and then think of a nice-sounding reason for it afterwards, too.
Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
...because asusming that Google's statement is true, there are too many others with their own agendas who will twist whatever's said to bolster their own positions.
While I don't like Google's actions in China, they're not nearly as reprehensible as Cisco Systems (equipping and training Chinese Police to seek out those who have spoken against the Government using the routers to prosecute) and Yahoo (turning over contact information of those who were specifically targeted), so Google really is a more minor player here than the others anyway.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Google describes how these China-based servers fit in to Google's mantra of 'Don't be evil.' Google hopes to use this as an opportunity to help bring global censorship into the spotlight of American politics.
Being evil fits into the idea of "Don't be Evil" because by being evil we are showing the evil of being evil, therefor getting people to talk about evil critically, which is Good.
Very noble of them!
In all honesty, I think this is overblown. Congress should examine its own dealings with China first.... clinging to this cold war ideal that isolating a population will cause it to stop supporting its government has been shown to be false (Cuba anyone). Only buy engaging a population, and exposing them to more of American culture can we cause change.
Put another way, missiles didn't win the Cold War, Bluejeans did.
Without arguing the issue if you agree or disagree with the House Of Representatives - do you think the house (or any branch of our gov't) cares about Google's mantra of "Don't be evil"? All they care about is the government (let us not get into a debate about how politicians are corrupt). I think Google needs to shy away from things like their "mantra" and focus on what benefit will this bring to the US. Once they can convince the gov't the pro's outweigh the con's then they will get what they want.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
In other words, they know that they have completely sold out their basic values. The rest is just pages of rationalization.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It's been interesting to see the robots from yahoo popping up in the logs with Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp China; http://misc.yahoo.com.cn/help.html) in them - i wonder if that will happen with Googlebot sightings or if we'll need to do traceroutes on them when we start seeing new ip addresses showing up from them
The logical flaw there is question-begging. The point is, they get to choose the countries they're in, and China need not be one of them.
It's really an age-old question: do you shun the evildoers so that they don't influence you, or do you go out and mingle with the evildoers so that you can be a positive influence?
Google appears to be saying that since content filters are not as good as their search engiine, they can be a more positive influence on the culture in China than cooperating with the Chinese harms them.
And there's money there.
sigs, as if you care.
There better not be a google.com/images service or 'll have to go all jihad on their asses.
Members of Congress suggesting Google is acting unethically? My whole world has turned upside down!
-- dR.fuZZo
'course they're not evil...
Anyone taking wagers that they're not already taking payments from US corporations and US politicians to filter out sites with "undesirable" information?
Google, in the interest of profit, has bent to China's demands. Maybe they aren't the only ones "complying with local laws", however they have the highest profile these days.
I think what is drawing the most attention is the fact that their motto, which touts corporate responsibility, is taking a back seat to profits. If you are going to paint yourself as the good guys then you should put that responsibilty ahead of profits. Otherwise just change your motto to -- "Out for a buck like everyone else."
And say they are looking to congress for moral guidance? What kind of a cheap cop out is that?
We need a new edition, that will also make it illegal for US companies to cooperate with civil rights suppression by foreign regimes.
Call your lawmaker...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I don't doubt that the Chinese government would want information about the Tiananmen Square massacre kept quiet. But that search just doesn't show evidence that Google has been complicit in keeping the information out of the hands of the Chinese citizens.
Rather, I think it's mostly a fucnction of what the significance of Tiananmen Square is across cultures. Americans are generally only familiar with the place as the result of the protests and subsequent crackdown. For Chinese, it's an historical place and a center of national pride; it's got more associations to it than just the crackdown.
Google Searches You
Xaotik Designs
So how is censorship going to encourage a freer place ? Misinformation is often more effective than disinformation, just like spies and assasins are more effective than soliders on a fort. The effect this will have is to prevent the majority from actually complaining, leaving the vocal minority of civil rights protestors looking like whiny children.
Didn't that mean give in to china or cuba or whatever country just to gain a toehold in that country.
As much as I'd like to believe all the moral claptrap in this release, I think the bottom line is clearly stated in the article as follows - The backdrop to Google's decision to launch Google.cn is the explosive growth of the Internet in China. and Google wants in. Yahoo has already made all the connections nearly half a year ago.To summarize - there's money in China and google.cn is going to be there too.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I can't fault them for wanting money 'cause I want it too, but I do believe buckling under China's rules made me lose respect for their judgement.
Another victim of the all-mighty greenback. >sigh
If Congress wants a revolution in China, great. I don't see why the hell they expect Google to fight their wars for them, though. I pay lots of tax money to fund the CIA so that *they* can start revolutions in various places.
A lot of people were pretty sure at one point that communism was a pretty enlightened and excellent idea. You can be damned sure that if the USSR started putting pressure on any organizations that they had influence over to spew communist ideology in the US, that people and government in the US would be pissy about it, and it would be considered "evil" by the people in the US.
Ultimately, revolutions come from within. If you don't have lots of discontented people, you aren't going to have an uprising. Maybe you can be the one to touch flame to tinder and accelerate things by a couple of years, but you can't build a revolution from nothing (but you can sure as hell antagonize people by trying). The folks in China clearly are not unhappy enough at the moment with the censorship going on to want to do something about it. All Google is doing is not trying to fight the social norms in China.
If Congress wants to run psyops, they can use the system that is already being paid for by my tax dollars -- Voice of America. As you can see in the table on WP, China is now the leading target of US propaganda. The end of the Cold War kind of terminated our interest in poking the Soviet Union.
China is a competitive market, and one in which Google is not dominant. If you try to force Google to leverage their market influence in the hopes of pushing your own culture on someone else, you're just going to kill Google in that market. That's a really stupid idea if you're trying to export services like Google.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I'd agree that Google's actions were pure evil, except for this one point:
"Disclosure to users -- We will give notification to Chinese users whenever search results have been removed."
This has the potential to be nicely subversive. Constantly reminding the users that their government is censoring information is, at least, a mitigation of the evil.
(b) Second, our policy conviction that expanding access to information to anyone who wants it will make our world a better, more informed, and freer place.
Some governments impose restrictions that make our mission difficult to achieve, and this is what we have encountered in China. In such a situation, we have to add to the balance a third fundamental commitment:
(c) Be responsive to local conditions.
Google's main problem is trying to juggle those three things, and it appears they have too many balls in the air. We posit that the Internet is free, yet restricting access to it and content on it is not impossible and occurs every day, not just in China. The Internet contains a lot of sound, fundamental information, a great deal that is personal, and plenty of farcical and disquieting ideas that would be better should they not see the light of day.
It comes down to self-censorship. If I don't like something, I don't search for information on it. How many of these "anti-porn" crusaders are spending literally hundreds of hours scouring the Web looking for this stuff? If it offends them so, why would they go looking for it? As to whether I should be looking for it, that's my decision, not theirs. This is the same debate that took place in the early days of radio and then television: what is approrpiate and what isn't. In those cases, arbitrary guidelines were created by cobbled-together groups to try and impose order, but now these technologies have expanded to such a degree that Howard Stern can get around the FCC by going to satellite radio and cable TV does not of necessity hold to the same standards as broadcast networks.
The Web is too big to control: the infrastructure is too cumbersome, the amount of redundancy too high, the number of methods of extracting data from it too numerous. Google is doing what it needs to do as a business, but in the end, even they cannot stop the flood of information, nor can the Chinese government. They are not necessarily doing "evil", but nor are they doing "good." It will be interesting to see what finally happens.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Personally, I think it would of been more evil if Google inforced it's own company values (in regards to censorship) on China and it's internet. *note* I don't agree with China's censorship but Google choosed the "less evil" option.
"Google gave testimony on Friday to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations."
"Google hopes to use this as an opportunity to help bring global censorship into the spotlight of American politics."
"Will it work?"
Naw
Er
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Here is the famous photo from Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 showing a young man standing in front of a column of Chinese tanks sent to quash the students who demonstrated for democracy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_mass acre.
Today we don't know the fate of that brave young man, but we can safely assume that there is more steel in that young man's spine than any of the leaders in Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cicso who would choose to clear the way for the Chinese tanks if they were given the choice.
Sun and Fun
All you folks that complain about google offering this service need to have your head examined.
Google has NOT shut down their chinese language servers outside China.
They have only ADDED servers in china that chinese folk can use to search WHICH THE CHINESE CITIZENS KNOW ARE CENSORED.
If the Chinese citizens want the uncensored, they still have the option of using the uncensored site and dealing with latency, but for the MAJORITY of their searches, they now have a nice and fast websearching utility. Think about it like this, you search for something, you see there is a censored site. Now you KNOW there is a censored site and can maybe search using a proxy etc.
Google has done an amazing thing here, and really has empowered people in china while still working within the laws.
I applaud their decision to offer a proper service to Chinese citizens who just want a quick search on local news etc. This is what MOST people want.
Ask yourself something. How many days out of the week do you spend looking up how to overthrow dictatorships, and then ask yourself how many times you look up your favorite music artist, favorite movie, favorite actor, favorite recipe?
As far as I'm concerned this was a logical decision and by google NOT shutting down their chinese servers outside the country, they have really shown they are attempting to help people.
Villainizing a company because they are attempting to help their shareholders and at the same time offering a service we all really enjoy and use for a variety of subjects is completely assanine.
needs to smack google
Google is simply interested in making money. Anything else is spin. Most slashdotters would rail against MS or SCO for such a stunt, so the reaction should be the same here. Not bullshit rationalization.
notice how they're not rushing into Burma or North Korea offering similar terms, why? because there's no profit to be made.
FWIW, I agree with Google's stated reasoning. Whether that's their actual reasoning or not is up for you to decide.
The fact of the matter is, they're not downgrading their chinese service at all. The chinese-language google.com derivative is still up and totally unfiltered, at least by them. The whole reason they're deploying thier search engine in a native chinese site is because the Chinese gov't was blocking or limiting access to google.com and thus totally cutting people off from the searching.
The fact that they say when their search results are blocked is huge, I think, and may even do more to help freedom of expression their. People, I think, are more likely to wake up to the situation when they're getting smacked in the face by "Your government doesn't want you to see this" as opposed to just sitting their in blissful ignorance, or at least not having it being actively pointed out to you.
I think that so long as google keeps up their policy of not deploying gmail or blogger there, since they can't guarantee the privacy of their chinese users' information, I believe in them. If they ever do deploy that stuff (without the chinese government's loosening its grip, of course), then disregard everything I just said.
It's hard to see how there can be any half-way house with this. Given the nature of Google's business, you are either fully in this market or right out if it. None of the half-way house arguments given by Schrage really stand up. Each one could equally well be applied to dealing with plenty of other odious regimes, many worse. Is it more ethical to put a combination lock or a conventional padlock on the door? Discuss.
Given Microsoft's brutal corporatism and apparent relish for steamrollering anyone in their way, I'm not surprised they were in like Flynn with the Chinese government. I am surprised at Google, though, and I think it's a huge mistake for them. Their pitch is not serving up search results but being trusted with the world's information, a different proposition entirely. Statements like Schrage's only suggest how uncomfortably the whole venture must be sitting with them. Google are not going to be trusted very widely now.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/b415d3ca-9e90-11da-b641-
I think their basic defense, which seems to be overlooked in this discussion is:
1) google.com was being censored by Chinese authorities anyway.
a) since this was being done by the government at a third-party level, user experince was far from optimal.
2) google.cn censors keywords, thus maintaining optimum service. censorship is evil but this was happenign anyway.
3) Importantly, google.com is still accessible in China at the same level as it was before. Thus what google is doing is an additional step for imporving service while letting what information that can escape the Great Chinese Firewall through google.com be accessible anyway.
Thats my understanding anyway. Correct me if im wrong...
I dont understand why everybdy thinks that this is about profits. Half the services google offers dont make any money at all. If google's goal is to make information available to all people they can't ignore a huge country like china. They have to establish some kind of relationship with the government and people of china. Of course I could be wrong and they could be greedy bastards but who am i to judge. For right now i consider this low on the evil scale.
everything else is baloney !! In the end there is no difference between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc and i think we are better off for it. When we blame MSFT, we are just blaming our systems because MSFT is living by the laws laid out and if not paying for it and that is all you can or should expect from a corporation. If you need them to behave differently, you need to adopt a different value, political and economic system. Tell me how you measure me and i'll tell you how i will behave.
The focus of late on questionable marketing techniques on message boards has got me thinking the people bitching about this must be Yahoo shills. Yes, I'm only joking (I hope I am), but how is this evil? If you were living in China, would you rather use google with results stripped out by your government, or would you rather use google.cn and know exactly what is being taken out?
There is a line here and it is so fine that a man or a company can step across it, go on about his business, and never know the difference. Google says it is trying to use this as an opportunity to help bring global censorship into the spotlight of American politics, but how would we feel if it were Microsoft saying that they have been trying to bring the dangers of illegal monopolies into the public light, or the RIAA, claiming to illuminate the hardships of the consumer.
Maybe Google is working "undercover" here. Maybe they are functioning as an operative. Or maybe they have switched sides and they don't even know it yet. Anandpur posted a link to the normal Google Image search for Tianamen square and to the Google China Image search for the same thing. The differences were both astounding and exactly what you would expect.
and her famous "just say no" to drugs catchphrase from the 1980s?
she was ridiculed for that, and rightly so, as "just say no" to drugs is a blatant simpleton's oversimplification of a complex problem
well guess what? "don't be evil" is the same sort of hilarious low iq oversimplification, and i'm kind of surprised at the slashdot crowd for not rolling in the aisles laughing at google
i'm really just waiting for the residual effects of being smitten with google in the early 2000s to wear off on the slashdot crowd, when google was a hugely popular upstart, and rightly so, back then
i'm waiting for the slashdot crowd to finally wake up to the fact that, whatever google was, it is now just another huge multinational, as much to be reviled or loved as oracle or microsoft
i sorely missing the usual amount of healthy criticism i get from the slashdot crowd, when it comes to the subject of google. everyone here handles them with kid gloves, and i don't think it is appropriate anymore
slashdot crowd: wake up, google is not your cute litle revolutionary upstart search engine from the early 2000s. it is an entirely different beast now, and you need to update your state of rapture with them, and start looking at them a lot more critically
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While I think it would be much better for the Chinese subjects for microsoft to not proactively censor web pages, for google to not censor search results, and for Yahoo to not sell out dissidents, I also think it is hypocritical for the government to censure these tech companies and yet extend "most favored nation" trade status to China themselves.
Or is that irony instead of hypocrisy? And is it ironic that China really doesn't need the cooperation of these companies, since with the Cisco routers they purchased, they can monitor, track and censor their subjects as much as they wish? Cisco is being dinged not for selling the technology, but for providing instruction manuals that describe how to do those things.
More music, fewer hits
All the images are from servers within the .cn tld, which is clearly what google has done, or been told to do. So in that I think you are right: Google is not strictly at fault.
/something/ happened, but very few people know what.
But the lack of images is nothing to with cultural significance. It's because anyone posting the images we know about is likely to be imprisoned. From stuff I have read, it appears that the massacre is still a huge secret over there. Many people know that
I'd like to see a worldwide campaign to tell the Chinese about it. Perhaps a web site that enabled you to print a letter to a random address in China. Seal and send, for 50c. Now get a thousand people a day doing it...
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Or at least a tool of Evil. Everything they do builds an infrastructure of surveillance that can be abused. No government will ignore them for long, the temptation is just too great. Eventually they will be bribed into "going along" as in China or compelled as in the US. Either way, Google will eventually be a tool used to monitor everything you do.
"Google hopes to use this as an opportunity to help bring global censorship into the spotlight of American politics."
So Google is now hopeful about the outcome of being called into congressional hearings so a bunch of politicians can bloviate about censorship? Huh?
I'm not going to say it's not possible that this is their intent, but it sure seems like there would be easier ways to do this as a company with the high-profile that Google has. In fact, it would seem it would have be more effective to publically state that China's censorship policies are too broad and back-out of censoring results, all the while jabbing at their competitors who *do* censor. This makes you look (and actually behave) like "the good guy", all the while bringing that same spotlight plus "good will".
I'm sorry guys. I like Google too. I want to defend them. But I can't bend on this one... every conclusion I come to says that this *is* evil. It should stop.
"God is dead!" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead!" - God
google.cn is an additional service not a replacement. with google.com, you get poor service + filtered content without disclosure. with google.cn, you get better service + filtered content with disclosure. morality has nothing to do with this. if I was living in china, I prefer the second scenario.
google is not in the business of changing local law, they are in the interest of search. law changes must be from within. the local people need to stand up to their gov. the external pressure is possible, but to be effective it must be on governmental level. I agree with google's decision, and it shows that they have thought things through, and have good reason to do what they are doing...
They sleep on satin sheets, and do so very comfortably.
How does the corporate leadership at Ford sleep after burning all those people up in Pintos and lately burning cops up in Ford cop cars because they wanted to save ten bucks on the gas tank? Or the dead people from the SUV rollovers?
How do the corporate leaders of Tyson foods sleep after burning up all those people in the factory that they had the doors chained shut to keep the workers from stealing chicken?
How did the corporate leadership of Enron sleep after the store in Puerto Rico blew up because of their incompetent staff? Or knowing that they cost Californians tons of money and made them do without electricity? Or taking folks' life savings?
I could go on, but the bottom line is, these people are plain evil; they're sociopaths. If you have a concience or any moral values at all, you're not very damned likely to be running a multinational corporation. In that job, morals are a definite detriment to your career. Not unlike being a politician.
(partial MRC="receptor")
[...straw men...]
"Evil" for countries is not the same as "evil" for individuals. The rules for conduct among nations, and even between a government and the governed, are different. People often label governmental action "evil" or "good" when the motivations and results of a given governmental action are much more complex than that.
For example, the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Were either or both of those just intended to mollify an angry domestic population, to show the government was doing something to fight terrorism, or were they really intended to protect liberty against and spread liberty to those wishing to destroy it? Were either or both about oil, geopolitical intrigue, or personal vendettas? Depends who you ask.
Or the minimum wage: some people consider the minimum wage an altruistic fight on behalf of the downtrodden to provide the good life for all. Others say it's a cynical attempt to buy votes which ends up making some jobs unprofitable, thus throwing people onto the dole or into homelessness. It's not as simple as good vs. evil, yet people cast it that way.
In Google's case, they've decided they're doing their part to spread the light of knowledge. It's what they do. How can that be evil, they ask? I don't know if it's evil, but I hope they don't find themselves on a slippery slope, on which the Chinese start demanding that they implement ever more accurate content controls.
sigs, as if you care.
I'd like to know what the heck the house of representatives is trying to prove. The US Govt encourages trade with China, with a huge amount of US Imports originating in China, and other countries where human rights abuses are rampant.
You don't see the House of Representatives going after Nike for manufatcturing shoes in sweat shops do you?
This is a bullshit stunt. While I don't support what Google does, they reall should go after companies like Nike first. In the grand scheme of things, child labour is a bigger deal than censorship IMHO.
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Many people who say the U.S. should not tell the Chinese what to do always have a "bag" of examples of how the United States is Hypocritical when dealing with countries like China/North Korea/Iran, ect.
It's easy bog a discussion/argument down by obscuficating details each one of which could be argued ad nauseum forever with people debating statistics and what not.
I don't think it's an unreasonable assumption to say that the United States for all it's faults and hypocracy is a better country when it comes to protections for it's citizens than China. I also don't think it's unreasonable to expect that a company based in the United States should be required to adhear to some basic American ideals. They are representing the U.S. with their business.
The United States and the Countries of Europe (along with other western democracies) are not perfect but the underlying ideas behind the U.S. constitution, declaration of independence, and other democracies like France and Britain are worth holding up to the rest of the world as something better that what has come before.
To stay quiet and not insist that we at least try to live by our own ideals is to give in, give up and abandon hope.
Yesterday google's vice president said
"Is a half-truth better than no truth? Is it better to have results that are misleading than to have no results at all? That is a very appropriate question to ask and one I don't have an answer for you today," Schrage, Google's vice president, replied."
I have an answer. "Half-Truths" are lies. No results are better than lies.
A. No local servers. Poor service. Censored invisibly. Failing market share.
B. Local servers. Better service. Censored visibly. Improving market share.
I know which I think is better.
From TFA:
"Crucial to this analysis is the fact that our new Google.cn website is an additional service, not a replacement for Google.com in China. The Chinese-language Google.com will remain open, unfiltered and available to all Internet users worldwide."
Google.cn is a totally new website. They haven't added filters to anything.
The problem is that google.com is very slow and unreliable for them.
So, with this new and additional service, you can rapidly search for normal things.
And if you don't like the results because google says they're filtered (as it does if they are), then you can still just go to google.com!
What's the problem with that, eh? They aren't forcing censorship upon the chinese population, at all, because they still have the choice of google.com
The elephant in the room here is Congress' acquiescence to unconstitutional "reforms" in the US. Tom Lantos spouts off about how reprehensible Google and Yahoo are, and his voting record is not bad in a lot of cases, but he sure thinks you ought not to have a gun and he voted for a fair number of "patriot" act constitutional infringements.
I'd far prefer to see him working for Americans' civil liberties than those of the Chinese.
"Google hopes to use this as an opportunity to help bring global censorship into the spotlight of American politics."
Maybe they should post child pornography on their front page to bring that subject into the spotlight as well.
v.m
I have a "Zero Policy" tolerance.
*/
What would be more evil would be deciding that we know how the people of China should live, decide that their government is corrupt and or evil and then send in the troops.
Up until the point of the troops I agree - people should have more freedom than the Chinese enjoy.
However it is not right for us to apply our standards to another culture and decide that they should be like us.
Countries need to develop and grow at their own pace.
For example, while we in the UK think that we have a nice society, well just look at whats going on now - thousands of women being denied the treatment that our National Health Service promises due to something trivial like money. And if you go back in time about 50 years you will find that it wasn't possible for a man to rape his wife in the eyes of the law, being married equalled consent.
So lets let China and other countries grow up at their own pace.
If we don't like what they do then we can let them know that we dont like it in other ways - for example boycott China.
If Google want to go into China that is fine, and I think it is GOOD that they respected the local laws and Government, rather than forcing them to change their minds at gunpoint
Google had a choice here: either provide Chinese residents with only the google.com service, which those residents had very unreliable access to, or provide the same google.com service as well as a reliable (but filtered) version that complies with local laws.
For a moment, forget that Google will profit financially from its position in China and just think about which action most benefits the Chinese residents. To me, it's a no-brainer: Google's decision here was the best one available. Was it perfect? Of course not. But it seems there was no better option.
A lot of people seem to be under the impression that Google should boycott China. Why? A Google boycott of China wouldn't do anything to help the situation. China doesn't rely on Google like the free world does, and the impact of a boycott would be minimal. If you want real change to happen in China, the best move is to expose the Chinese residents to the most information from outside sources that you can possibly expose them to. That's exactly what Google is trying to do.
Who wants to run the site to bring the topic of naked women writing in kiddie pools filled with chocolate pudding into the spotlight of American politics?
i.e. - We are doing this to make money and will find a rationalization to show we're serving the greater good with it.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
google.cn search results page does have a diclaimer in chinese: 。. (sorry if the chinese doesn't display) translation: according to local laws and regulations, some search results were not displayed.
it's one thing to call chinese gov't evil (a debate for another day), but another to say google is doing evil just because they're "following local laws." one long standing american tradition IS the rule of law after all. any one remember the movie amidstad when the arguement on whether to return HUMAN SLAVES to their owners rested on a matter of whether some treaty between u.s. and spain specified for the return of PROPERTY? google is a company that needs to compete in the global market and china is the biggest emerging market. free market dictates that consumers (YOU) choose vendors based on your preference and affecting vendors through the magic of demand and the market. that is all. if we're arguing whether google is the same little lovable co as it was two years ago, that argument's been settled when their stock broke $400. if not, WHAT ARE WE ARGUING ABOUT?
now for my 2c: i think ppl are upset here because they're frustrated america isn't able to run china like it's run the rest of world. it's the one country that hasn't bowed completely to american ways and unlike the middle east, isn't prone to hostile take overs either. google capitulating is just another example of american companies bowing to the $ (or RMB, but it's really $ b/c it's their stock value here in america that matters most). gone are the good o' days of british east india and dutch east india companies when western corporations can impose our superior values on the evil, backwards asian countries isn't it?
...why it's Google's job to take China to task for human rights? Doesn't it seem a little unfair, given we as a nation completely and utterly condone their practice implicitly by importing billions of dollars worth of goods and permanantly extending MFN status and whatnot? If Congress is so righteous about China, let's see some legislation. Oh, you mean it's easier and safer to have public hearings and just blame some tech companies? Okay, yeah, let's do that instead.
Seriously, am I the only one who finds it the peak of hypocrisy to see the legislative body of a lone superpower blaming Google for not doing enough to bring about human rights reform in China?
Either China is a wonderful country that everyone should relish doing business with, and worthy of being given "Most Favored Nation" status, or it's Evil, Bad & Wrong, and there should be a trade embargo.
It shouldn't do the former, and then shout at Google for not realising that the latter should really be the case. I just couldn't believe the sheer two-faced idiocy of the congressmen slinging that mud.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Everybody should note that they also block search terms in Germnay and France.
the ONLY reason was able to develop such a strong motto in the first place, is because of the good ol', capitalistic, United States of America..
obviously, if a COMMUNIST Country such as China, requires Google to play by different rules, then Google will have to do so.. Its not like Google planned on this happening.. Actually, thanks to China's money, and Google's cooperation, Google will CONTINUE to develop AMAZING software that constantly innovates how we operate here on the intenet.. and WE, as people outside of China, will benefit greatly if Google plays by some simple rules..
if the people of China want something changed about how their government works, then they're going to need to take a stand.. But why the hell boycott Google because of the way China runs their government?? you've gotta be outta your mind .. they've been loyal to you, yet you shit on them about a country you don't even live in..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
At this point I'd like to remind everyone that Yahoo and MSN have been running internal filtered search engines in china for way longer than google.
I'd also like to remind you that Yahoo handed over information about a journalist to the Chinese authorities. They linked the man, Shi Tao, to an email account with an email containing "state secrets". He got 10 years in prison. All because Yahoo actively turned him in.
Google could make a whole big sum of money launching gmail in china. Guess what. They aren't launching gmail in China. I'd like to see if anyone can come up with any other reason for that, other than them not wanting to do things like what yahoo did.
There is no censorship in China - it's just an urban legand. It's been debunked by Snopes China.
Then also tell Wal-Mart they can't import so many cheap goods produced there.
Our geese and ganders should be the same color.. or something like that.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
I think it's lovely that companies can align their noble stances on democracy and freedom in such a way that they can still continue to make millions of dollars in profit.
It's win win all around!
Except if you're chinese I guess.
The effect it would have on China trade and censorship policies would likely be far greater if a high profile company like Google did not capitulate. I think the Google zealots are coming to terms with reality that the do no evil phrase is just marketing speak. I am not saying they are doing evil however I believe people now realize that Google is no different than any other multi-national corporation doing business in China. So no one should be suprised that they are not doing more to take a stand against censorship and human rights in China. I just brought online the .com.cn .cn versions of Newslookup.com which is essentially a mirror of our english news service for that region. So this should be interesting to hear service reports from China.
I don't see a problem if Google uses their initial presence to push things into China later. Obviously, no one who refuses censorship is going to be allowed to set one foot on the other side of the Great Firewall of China.
I'm hoping Google is toeing up to the line simply to get in the door, and then they'll push the envelope every chance they get once the Chinese government realizes the people are as hooked on it as Americans are.
Now that would ultimately be a non-evil strategy. Of course, Google couldn't come out and actually tell people if they were doing this.
I don't think it's selling out. I think it's part of a bigger game. Either way, we'll know in a few years because we should hear the howling of Chinese authorities about how "poorly" Google is enforcing their censorship guidelines.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
opening a little backdoor for them in Vista. http://news.mydrivers.com/pages/20060216164208_923 88.htm
Missles made the war a cold war instead of a "lay waste to all of Europe with a 20 year war" war.
We forget that since the formation of nation states it was customary to engage ones neighbors/enimies/idealogical opponents with the most violent tactics possible , and that for the last 60 or so we have managed to limit this to a much smaller scale. Why? because we are scared shitless.
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=wikipedia+t iananmen&btnG=Google+%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&meta=
a nanmen
http://www.google.com/search?hl=cn&q=wikipedia+ti
Did you know that China also requires the kicking of babies to do business in China? Guess Google is gonna have to do that too
The Chinese government is acting like the parent who, because they run NetNanny or Cyberpatrol while their kids roam the web, they can magically prevent their kids from ever seeing pornography. All the kid has to do is look at Google cache and they can find all the porn they want, no matter what filter is in place. I don't care what filter you user -- once you have access to Google, there is no way to stop you from eventually finding what you are looking for.
Likewise the Chinese government. Having a filtered Google that can easily be circumvented will result in the propogation of the truth to the Chinese people, not the hiding of truth that the Chinese government expects. Once the people have access to the truth through Google, censorship becomes irrelevant.
The Chinese people benefit more from a Google that is ineffectively censored than they do from no Google at all.
If it were just about face I wouldn't care much. What bugs me is that China now has Google providing them with two views of every search: they (the Chinese censors) can view the unfiltered results at US (or UK, etc.) Google, and then they can view the filtered results at Google.cn, compare the two, and tune their filtering.
Worse, the difference also gives them a quick way of skimming the list looking for Chinese operated rogue sites, so they can crack down on them faster.
Had Google not acceded to China's filtering demands, then China would be left developing this capability on their own, and, gee, the programmers working on that would have to be able to see all the unfiltered stuff in order to filter it. That might slow down the project a bit.
I watched this hearing on CNN Pipeline (very cool service, btw).
Unlike most hearings, which seem to be nothing more than the two parties posturing for different reasons, this largely seemed non-partisan, and was quite interesting. At first. Then it got surreal.
A congressman (not sure which party) was berating the companies, badgering them. His questioning finally boiled down to, "Have you done anything here you should be ASHAMED of?" Over and over, he kept asking them, are they ashamed, and they kept trying to answer the question... balancing between, yes China sucks, but we honestly feel this is the lesser of two evils. It appeared this congressman was trying to lump them in with IBM's work with the Nazis. He flat out made the comparison. (No one brought up Godwin's, natch.)
I mean, I get what he was aiming at, but he was unreasonable. They kept saying, we're not happy with what China requires, but we feel providing some service (with disclosures on things being removed from view, in Google's case) that this can be a helpful thing. Compared to our Chinese search competitors, who don't let the Chinese people know when things are being filtered. It wasn't good enough for the congressman. This guy wanted to hear them say, Yeah, we're ashamed.
Here's where it gets interesting.
A short while later, a Democratic congressman praised this other congressman, the chair of the hearing, and how much he respected him. But then he started railing against Congress. His point was, Congress is trying to take these companies to task, and yet Congress is giving China favored nation trading status, and why don't we also ask these hard questions of Congress?!
Then a Republican congressman started next -- essentially saying, excuse me, but the reason Congress grants favored nation status to China is because these large companies pay to have all this lobbying done in order to get China's favored nation trading status so they can keep doing business with them! So take that!
Aside from the strangeness of a Democrat standing up for big business and a Republican condemning them, we were left with a huge elephant standing in the corner:
WHY DOESN'T CONGRESS DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE FUCKING LOBBYISTS?
This was the next logical course of reasoning, but no congressman asked that question.
The Congress will take action against businesses dealing with China only when it's in their best interest, not ours or China's.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
It's really fun to see this kind of drama in US. I'm Chinese. Does Chinese people in China care about google? NOBODY CARES! They have their own searching engine (baidu.com). Either google goes into China now or never go in by losing competition. Besides, I strongly support government censorship on Internet since there are too much craps over there. Think about your kids browsing on the Internet in US. If my son was in China, I felt much better and safer. I see enough craps in US, kids bring gun to shoot teacher (free to own gun), child prono, phone interception, poor people in Katrina, proud to conquer the Iraq which has nothing to do with US. And losing competition with China by complaining job lose, trade deficit and China yuan's exchange rate. What I see is the symptom falling down country. Read history you will realize the fact. Sadly American history knowledge really sucks.
You start off by stating that you hate the self-righteousness of the government of this country, and saying that they shouldn't expect companies to act morally or by american values, and then you end saying that congress should take a stand.
Take a stand and do what? Do this?
Frankly, I'm rather scared of congress getting involved in complex moral issues. I wish people would have exactly the attitude that you seem to really hate. Instead of wishing congress would fix everything for them, people should hold companies accountable. Congress is held accountable to large corporations, generally not the other way around, unless there is a huge public outcry.
Oh, and so far I still don't think I know enough about the chinese censorship issue to make a judgement on whether google is doing "good" or "evil". I think we'll have to wait and see the ramifications.
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Incite and flee.
Just to doublecheck you point I clicked next a few times and found this:1 0&hl=zh-CN&lr=&cr=countryCN&start=80&sa=N
http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen&svnum=
Checkout the sixth picture.
Go Gusties
Hasn't Google learned anything from evil companies like Haliburton? You make a subsidiary that is evil (like KBR), while disavowing any responsibility for that company.
That's where CHOOGLE comes in... the Chinese evil Google.
" ..public affairs at Google describes how these China-based servers fit in to Google's mantra of 'Don't be evil.' Google hopes to use this as an opportunity to help bring global censorship into the spotlight of American politics."
This sounds a lot like the old "I'm going to get them from the inside" excuse, which is nothing more than a delusion. They are in there for one reason only - GOOGLE!
The unfiltered results for google.com are still available - when & in whatever condition the post government-filtered pages would have been.
The existance of google.cn is strictly ancilary. From TFA - 98% of the searches originating from China are requests for CHINESE - as in hosted inside China - sites.
* The self censorship for sites is going to be much higher inside the Chinese firewall than out.
* Google.cn is supposed to NOTIFY you if they filter something.
* Google.com is still available.
* Google.com search results are themselves sometimes filtered.
* Sites lacking violence, Porn, and political content are not filtered.
Let's see where this leads us:
* 98% of Google.cn searches return results principly for content that is already self censored by the site
* Google.cn searches which would have returned results subject to filtering, will notify you of that fact.
* Knowing there is a filtered responce, you can still use Google.com to find the filtered URL.
* Having the Filtered URL, in most cases you are still prohibited by the ISP filtering software from viewing it.
What is the net result of this? - Better overall service for Google's Chinese customers.
Google get's access to 105 million broadband customers - expected to grow to 250 million customers in a few years - and can provide Chinese users with rapid, clear, and relevant searches. In addition, by controlling the filtering, they can clearly identify to thier users that some results have been selectively removed (and what type of content (political, sexual, violent) triggered the filtering - although I don't know if this is being done). Are they bowing to political pressure - sure - EVERY COMPANY DOES whether it's EBAY in France, or AT&T in the US - it's the price of doing business. The difference is that they are NOT degrading their service. Google.com(Chinese) is still available. Google.cn is just better for local results - just like google.fr is better for French users, and google.uk is better for UK users.
Oh sure, you can have images but they either covered up or they are anti-Semite or anti-Europe, or anti-US. Now those are funny!
... is that Google is -not- changing anything on the google.com site. Not a thing. All they're doing is essentially creating a second system, tailored to fit in with Chinese laws. Anyone who wants uncensored information or at least wants to try and get through the Great Firewall of China, is still free to do so just as easily as they were before google.cn.
Google may not be doing what a lot of us would consider "good" in this case, which would be to open an unrestricted portal in China, while still enhancing the experience Chinese users get with Google. But they simply -can't-. It's illegal there, and like it or not, they've got as much right to set the rules for their country as we do ours. If we really cared about it that much, we wouldn't all be using computers that have components made in China. Say you're boycotting Chinese products all you want, but someplace on your motherboard you've most likely got a Chinese part.
What Google decided to do was simply expand their offering, gain some market share, without compromising the primary mission of the company to continue providing "unfiltered" access through the main portal, the one anyone with half a clue will try and use anyhow, once they see the note on google.cn saying that results have been filtered. You could easily make a case for Google actually being actively -good- by pointing out when things are filtered, unlike the local competition, which would be a clear sign to users that they should look elsewhere for good results.
This isn't evil, and if you still feel like it goes against Google's creed, you're being naive. Call or write your congresscritters and tell them you want to see the US put more leverage down on Chinese trade if you feel that strongly about the issue. I'm confident that things will improve there with time, without having to get into international hissy fits or getting all worked up about it.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
What seems absolutely ridiculous, frightening really, is that our Congress is bringing these companies up to the Hill to yell at them. What is that saying, something about living in glass houses? Come on people. Get Congress to get its act together first, then tell me about Google.
Most insightful post about Google I've seen on slashdot for years.
Go back and check any WalMart-related article on Slashdot. Go ahead...check it out. I think you'll find that most posters on this site hate Walmart for many reasons. Including their support of the repressive commie regime in China.
Are you late for Algebra?
Blar.
What happens when an unstoppable financial force meets an unmoveable ethical object? I think we have our answer. If Google didn't flaunt it's "Don't be evil" code, I don't think this would be an issue. It's the fact that they pride[d] themselves on being a company that did the right thing.
Is this the right thing according to their own code of ethics?
ConsultingFair.com
I will be using it, unless you tell me otherwise.
Oh, and I definitely agree with your post.
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Incite and flee.
Try searching for "tiananmen square massacre", seems to give a few results. And I was getting some results from peacefire.org, which US censorship programs usually block. Not sure if they could've accessed it or not though. Can they view pages from Google's cache server?
> I have to wonder, how many people in China are actually unaware of what happened there?
m l
Probably at least as many as there are Americans deluding themselves into thinking they are actually aware of what happened there.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0603/p01s04-woap.ht
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
We need one that prohibits (and provides for the public execution of) government official and weaponeers providing, selling, or giving access to weapons to people to fight US proxy wars, which lead to changes in the political winds, which lead to the proxy fighters being discarded and left out to hang at the hands of the government which survived US meddling.
Yeh, we could save a LOT of lives, stand better on grounds of "ETHICS" if we concentrate on the ethics of NOT MAKING ENEMIES.
In other past news, the US backs China's bid for coveted status of Most Favored Nation...
Talk about ethics, hypocrisy and other schizoid conditions... all allowed in the name of "moneh"
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
I think google is trying to be good men.
I'm not a Google fanboy, and I don't particularly trust Google. But I gotta side with Google on this one.
People seem to be arguing that China is evil, and implying that somehow Google can force China not to be evil by boycotting the country. I really can't imagine any scenario where that would work, even if every other search engine in the world joined them.
Other people seem to be arguing that Google is _supporting_ China, but they seem to ignore the fact that our own government has increased trade with China in an attempt to help shift Chinese internal power away from Beijing.
Now you have Google, who has almost no negotiating power with the Chinese government. They have to choose between doing nothing in China (which will certainly not help the Chinese people) or doing what they can in China. They chose to do what they can, and frankly, I think they did as much as can be expected. Certainly more than other search engines. Certainly more than Wal-Mart!
More information is better than less information. Google isn't providing misinformation, and when information is censored, they come right out and say it. That's a _good thing_. No, it's not ideal, but the alternative is nothing. Take the good you can get, folks. It's the only way you're ever going to get more.
Should be the new Google mantra.
you can't fight tyranny by operating in partnership with it. data wants to be free, and google of all outfits should understand the concept. it's a plain old sell-out to self-censor in china. the domestic equivalent is if I do a search on "hillary's presidential campaign," the terror alarm goes off at the nsa along with my IP address. it is wholly inconsistent for google to fight NSA snoops and knuckle under to china. and as we all know, wholly inconsistent usually adds up to "somebody's hiding money."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Defends its right to censor to increase profits!!!
Google is improving the chinese firewall. Since google is taking the job to filter results themselves using their own infrastrutucture and technology, it saves effort for the chinese government that can use it to censor someone else, making viable the cost of maintaning a firewall for its increasing traffic.
Google will be also more efficient filtering results since they know their own technology, no reverse engineering needed, and is also known as an efficient company. So it will be less likely that a page against the regime will be shown on the results. People is already noticing, that most searches you do you get only pages that expose the government truth about the facts. And if you can't see (the other side) it doesn't exist. So if you think differently the problem is possible with you, since no one else seens to think that way.
Google is also helping the regime in a away that it follow every chinese government directions. That way the chinese don't need to block google, maitaning the access to all the technology information google provides.
Slashdot.... Hypocrytical Zio*ists....
The Question of Civilization in War
The British newspaper News of the World on Feb.12 reported an incident of British soldiers beating teenage Iraqis two years ago and related video has been widely broadcast. Following the exposal of US troops' abuse of prisoners in Iraq British soldiers' brutal acts in the war in Iraq gradually come to light, which leads to shocks as well as contemplation.
The British soldiers' brutal behavior happened two years ago. During the two years, neither those in question, witnesses nor those who learned of it later viewed this as brutal or shameful. Otherwise, the incident wouldn't take two years before it is exposed. Rather, it caused clamor and shocks in the society two years later, after it was exposed in the form of video evidence. There is a big difference in response between the two, which perhaps can be attributed to the difference between "war culture" and "peace culture". In other words, things intolerable in a normal and peaceful society can happen quite often in a war environment and be viewed as normal.
The distortion of human nature and mentality by war is indeed an issue worthy of serious studies. It is believed that the US and British troops' brutality can't be limited to the few incidents caught by the camera and there must be much more unrecorded by the camera, only these have been ignored, tolerated and wrapped up in the special war environment. British Prime Minister Tony Blair's explanation for this -- "most British soldiers are good" -- is too juvenile.
If it is argued that the British soldiers' behavior has behind it a kind of "war culture", it is also true that their behavior has not been regulated by "wartime laws". After the exposal two years later the British government and military said they would investigate. It goes to prove that the British military lacked internal self-regulating legal environment during the Iraqi war, the most important of which are education and supervision mechanisms.
Since the advent of human society it has tried to establish certain kinds of war civilization. Duke Xiang of State Song in the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) was a typical example of pedant in wartime. However, he was among the first attempting to propose war morals (for example, refraining from killing the surrendered and capturing the gray haired etc.).
In more recent times, the international community set up an elementary treaty system regarding treatment of war prisoners and civilians and certain social awareness has formed in many countries. However, such and such abuse behaviors during the war in Iraq show that effort in this regard is still wanting in some countries and in the troops that most need war civilization.
Behind the "US troops' prisoner abuse" and "British soldiers' brutal beating," two ideological elements need to be discussed. One is the "civilization superiority" and the other "conqueror's mentality". Under the US and British official propaganda the US and British soldiers at large have the tendency to regard themselves as "liberators" and "sowers of advanced civilization". The mentality will inevitably lead to a kind of disdain of Iraqi culture and religion and therefore cause many conflicts.
"Conqueror's mentality", on the other hand, is determined by the fact of occupation. This fact often places a condescending mentality in the occupiers, a mentality of doing whatever one wants which induces various ugly elements in the human nature.
War is the highest violent form of human confrontation. To reduce as much as possible the damage of war is perhaps the original intention of establishing war civilization. This is a thing hard to accomplish. However, it is something worthy of try under the circumstance that war cannot be avoided.
Google has been getting quite a bashing lately for setting up shop in China. I'm not sure I agree though with some who think this is all bad. While google must censor specific search results relating to freedom of speech, civil liberties and the like, they still have the means to search and access all the world's information via the google search engine outside of the specific restricted key word searches. Just giving the people the power of all this knowledge and information is incredibly empowering and will allow their minds to look beyond what their government has restricted in an indirect manner. While these people will not be allowed to search for specific events like Tiananmen Square, they can, with more ease research world history, current events, and things that will be enable them to draw independent conclusions about the world around them, and in turn, question the government that restricts them. Also, on the google.cn page, when the search result is blocked, this message is displayed:
"To comply with local laws, regulations and policies, some search results are not displayed".
This is where I think google really won one against the Chinese gov't. They are basically saying 'look, we could've provided you the info you are looking for, but your gov't has choosen to have the information blocked' This is a serious defeat the propaganda machine and the way that censorship works. In a perfect totalitarian society, the citizens would have no idea that there was information out there that was being restricted in the first place. The society would live in complete ignorance to the fact that they weren't getting the whole truth. What google is able to do is show them that there is more out there, and if it wasn't for their gov't, they would have access to it. This strikes me as better than no access at all.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -Hunter S. Thompson
Uhm, i have high hopes in Nigeria too.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
No it isn't. It's idiotic! You have to almost completely drop out of the economy to avoid Chinese products, you aren't helping the Chinese by doing so, and completely outside of all that the Chinese are busy buying up our dollars to keep our debt propped up, so you're in the game one way or another.
I will be visiting China later this year and I'm very curious about what, if any, attempt will be made to keep various things out of my sight, but one thing's for sure: economically boycotting nations (as we do with Cuba) appears to produce the opposite effect. Try taking a stand that means something, not a phony stance that just makes you feel better about yourself.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Actually, the whole point of corporations originally was to create a taskforce that served SOCIETY. If anything, we've gotten very far from that original meaning. Corporations are now above the law, and a threat to the right thing. The only motivation or consideration they have is profit. I'd actually like to see them expected to uphold some values, just for the novelty value.
*waves byebye to non-existent karma*
*clears throat*
Somewhere in all this smut did someone bother to mention why google providing a service to chinese citizens is immoral or evil? Sorry but all i see is nonsensical google bashing (which i have noticed a lot lately, even more nonsensical than MS bashing) and people speaking sense but in reply to something so stupid that it just nullifies it.
So here's my nullified lump of sense mixed in with some opinion:
This whole cencsorship thing in china is political. If the american government doesn't like it, that's great, because politics is their field NOT the field of private multinational corporations.
The "do no evil" thing i like to think of in regards to business ethics NOT personal ethics/morals. If google started hurting it's users in pursuit of profit then i'd say they were being hypocrtis. Since when did following the law = hurting users? The law is the law, if anyone is hurting the users then it's the government and even more so the users doing things they know are against the law. It's different if they went the extra mile (or 10,000 miles in cisco's case) but they haven't.
At the end of the day if the chinese government pressure Google to give up information on people who aren't even breaking a specific law then they can always just pack up and go home.
Google hopes to use this as an opportunity to help bring global censorship into the spotlight of American politics.
/. and similar places, let's not kid ourselves--the general public isn't aware and probably doesn't care either.
The spotlight of politics is mostly on the matters that the general public are aware of as well. And while Google/China is debated at length here at
There is an interesting statement in Google's reaction that makes me feel better about them, but first let's ask, what is censorship in this context?
UNCENSORED results are those that Google's algorithm returns and are directed to the user without modification other than the usual, accepted methods. (For example, if you have a Google account, or maybe even just a cookie, then over time some results are biases over others in the rankings according to what Google's machines think it's more likely you're looking for. That is beside the point to my argument however.)
CENSORED results are those from which, for whatever reason but so far just those that come as a result of legal interference, have some results removed.
Of course, the U.S. has had censored results for some time: the results of a DMCA-based lawsuit has required that Google remove some page results from Scientology-related results. Although it is possible to make an argument there, I choose not to pursue it, since Google is obviously just as upset about that situation as anyone who isn't the Church of Scientology. (Note that you don't hear anyone in Congress complaining about the DMCA!)
Now, let's think about results. Not providing any results is essentially complete and total censorship. Providing partial results is also censorship, but there is a key difference there: Google informs the user when search results have been blocked. Indeed, I believe that the notification from a Chinese government-sponsored censoring is very similar to the DMCA takedown notice, that is, it pointedly lets the user know that something has been removed from the search results, that they are not getting the whole picture.
That is a powerful statement, that the censoring is not done silently. It is still censorship, and I'm not sure that I can let Google completely off the hook, but considering the ignorance of most Chinese concerning their government's attempts to keep information out of their hands, I think it's a potent decision, and I'm kind of surprised the Chinese government accepted it. I think Google's position is that the only censorship that can succeed entirely is total censorship: the "information silhouette" of the removed material remains, and further I have no doubt that as people discover the exactly shape of that silhouette (that is to say, they discover exactly what is being removed from search results) that activists will find ways to get around it, which would be impossible were Google banned outright.
So I'm okay with it, in general. At the moment, that is... I reserve the right to change my opinion if something else comes up, or if someone comes up with a good counter-argument. As we all should.
Bah. Go to China just to earn money. Help the government censor because not bowing to them could hurt your objective. Then spin it around it was a plan all along for the good of humanity.
Google is evil.
There's no other reason they would brown nose the chinese government. They just want the $$$$. How greedy of them.
We need a new edition, that will also make it illegal for US companies to cooperate with civil rights suppression by foreign regimes.
I would be more convinced of this argument if it was started this way:
We need a new edition, that will also make it illegal for the US government to cooperate with civil rights suppression by foreign regimes.
Thank you. That is all.
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$tar -xvf
Click Here to find out if one of your representatives is a member of this subcommittee.
Whether you agree with the representatives or with the companies, let them know what you think. I understand the feeling of betrayal on both sides - it seems like the companies have turned to "the dark side" in order to do business in China. But it also reeks of hypocrisy listening to members of our government lambasting companies for doing business in China according to China's laws (when the US is seemingly an advocate for filtration of the internet). Just try to pigeonhole one of these guys for questions on how we can trade with a country that has such horrific human rights violations.
When you dig past all the bs, the bottom line is that powerfull individuals in China are making choices that are evil, and powerfull individuals at Google (and Cisco, and Yahoo) are making choices to help them be evil. Everything else is just bs, red-herrings, excuses, and hiding behind governments and corporate identities - to disguise the facts.
Yeah, I'm sure there are all sorts of nice sounding reasons to support evil choices. There always is, but a nice sounding reason doesn't make a choice any less of a choice. So the bottom line is that either you support evil choices, or you don't and in doing so you are either going to make an evil choice or you are not.
As a non-english reader, I can confirm this with the Spanish version of Google. I noticed that Google.es gives more priority to sites in Spanish than English sites, so the results from the two Google sites are quite different.
I think that may happen in Google China, I think
This is the point exactly!
> There, the economy collapsed, the oligarchs ran off with everything, and organized crime filled the power vacuum left by the absence of the state.
I almost wonder if that isn't how governments formed to begin with.
I mean, the French revolution was pretty ugly...
I was at the hearing, and most of the reporters left before Asia and Pacific Chairman Jim Leach (R-IA) asked the most important question of the day.
Leach to Google: how did you decide what to block, what would be excluded?
Google: We used existing search engines and our own search tools to see what terms were already blocked, and what sites were appearing within China, and we used that to create google.cn
Leach: So you weren't given a list? That sounds like instead of creating a 'best practices' solution, you created a WORST practices solution. If I want to learn about how to censor, it sounds like I should come to you!
During this dialog, Elliot kept referring to the need to "follow the law in order to be granted a license". He kept hitting that point; and while he was right in saying that, it's pretty clear that Google was finding ways to make sure the Chinese were happy, rather than find the very edge of the law, and push.
I think it is open to debate regarding enagement vs. containment, but another Congressman, Robert Wexler (D-FL), hit it right on the head. He said the decision about engagement is in the hands of government, not in the hands of businesses. It is up to Congress and the Administration to set foreign policy. Businesses are beholden to their shareholders, Congress is beholden to the voters.
A sig?!? I don't think so.....
Big Fucking Deal.
To be clear, what part of that is evil? Did they make the rules that they must comply with? Is it because you all seem to think they have some crazy obligation to change the world with a freakin' search engine? Oh, I know, the Chinese can use the regular version of google. Google doesn't stop them from doing that. Their "government" does. At least the have a little something with what google provides them now. An index to the info that they're allowed to know about it now easily searchable! Oh, wait, that's evil for sure.
So again, what did google do that was evil? How does it compare to the big pile of goods you have in your house manufactured in China? Who's supporting what here?
Sorry for the discenting opinion, but my karma's already as bad as it can get, so I can express a different view without fear of further reprisal. And since I'm so late to the thread, I'm not going to proof or worry about anyone reading this.
I'm not sure if the redirection from google.com to google.cn is anything particularly sinister here; If I go to google.com from within India, I get automatically redirected to google.co.in. However, there's a fairly prominent link labeled "Google.com in English" that takes me back to google.com if I so choose. From here, it looks like google.cn has the same setup. Of course, I'm not within China, so I can't say for sure if it is the same for domestic Chinese users.
Aw comon, do you really think that this is about free speech? The present administration barely tolerates free speech here in the US, why would they care about it elsewhere? And to offend potential large contributors at the start of a difficult election cycle requires something really important.
And is is important. Everyone is familiar with the use of Google, Yahoo, etc. as an index to the web. The US government approves of that purpose, so much so that they exempted intenet companies from taxes just to help them grow.
But Google, Yahoo, etc. also have a potential darker side; they are a unparalelled Competitive Intelligence tool.
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, "Competitive intelligence" is the polite name for industrial espionage, which the US, unofficially, also approves of.
But then there is international competitive intelligence, usually referred to as spying.
Happens all the time, in both directions, here in the US. Some of it is tolerated (you have to give something to get something) but only under State Department authorization and oversight...well some governmental agencies oversight, anyhow.
The problem is, Google, Yahoo, etc. blur that distinction. When they start making private deals with other governments, or worse yet, with competitive intelligence agencies that may relay information to other national entities, they have moved from search engine/business intelligence company to an frelance international espionage agency.
Amd thats an action that warrants a lot more than an uncomfortable Wednesday being grilled by a group of congresspeople.
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc. are highly valuable assets to the United States...noone wants the situation to deteriorate to the point where such actions against them are necessary. I suspect the hearings were just a gentle reminder that almost limitless license to act which big business is offered in the United States does NOT apply to independent action that may interfere with foreign relations. Just because an organization is multinational and has a GNP larger than most coutries does not mean that it can conduct its own foreign policy.
The House Republicans are just pissy because 99% of Google's political contributions go to Democrats. Plus the social conservatives within the GOP are still feeling the rejection from Google not acquiescing in the War on Pornography.
Ironically, Google's actions seem more libertarian than they are liberal. With the anti-porn fishing expedition, they're standing up for smaller and less intrusive government, and with China, they're looking out for their own business self-interest. Well done, Google.
http://amphitwister.blogspot.com/2006/02/there-hav e-been-so-much-publicity-and.html