Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Stands Ground on Google.cn

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the testify dept.

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?"

14 of 331 comments (clear)

  1. Google.cn by aliscool · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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

  2. Uhuh by sexyrexy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  3. Re:Picture is worth 1k words by tpgp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Thanks, but we've all seen Google China's tiananmen search vs The US version

    However it's interesting to note that something censored in the US is censored all over the world

    Not comparing what's been censored. Just where.

    --
    My pics.
  4. We need FCPA-2.0 by mi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The original Foreign Corrupt Practices Act concentrates on preventing bribery of foreign officials by American companies.

    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.
    1. Re:We need FCPA-2.0 by ameoba · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I find it interesting that everyone's making a big stink about Google following Chinese laws when operating in China yet they're perfectly OK with companies like Walmart pumping billions upon billions of dollars into the same country.

      I guess this means that the astronomical sums of money we're spending on goods from a Communist country is not ending up in the government coffers & being used to pursue further opression.

      --
      my sig's at the bottom of the page.
  5. That's a bit misleading by Reality+Master+201 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Yes, the first few pages only show pictures of the square. But page 3 of the search I saw showed pictures of protest organizers, and page 5 showed pictures of tanks. From domains within china

    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.

    1. Re:That's a bit misleading by glesga_kiss · · Score: 2, Interesting
      also you must consider if the pages google happens to be spidering are in china, more than likely the higher number of them WILL have normal pictures of the place

      I concurr. When I visited Tiananmen Square, it was full of Chinese tourists, many visiting for the first time. (it's a huge country). Tiananmen is in the centre of Bejing and it is at the entrance to The Forbidden City, probably the biggest tourist attraction in China. Many of them had never met a westerner before, I'm in many Chinese family photo albums because of this. Some asked & posed, some just snapped a shot, and some had their family walk past you as they tried to take a shot with both you and them in the frame. Quite funny really.

      I'm kinda tempted to hit google.cn/images and have a look for myself!!

  6. You're mostly right... by aug24 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    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 /something/ happened, but very few people know what.

    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.
  7. An opportunity for ... what did he say!? by acousticiris · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "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
  8. Re:The most telling admission by qw(name) · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The fact still remains that anytime an America-based company does business overseas the government will be involved. If, when the overseas, America-based company acts contrary to the laws of America, the government should and will get involved.

    Just because you don't observe the US government trying to make change in China doesn't mean it isn't tring to do just that. I would expect an internal, covert change like that would be classified to a very high level.

    Private industry is made up of "the people of this country." So in actuality one should not distiguish the two.

  9. Re:Huh? by RealProgrammer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually, I do personally boycott China.

    The reason I labeled your arguments straw was that you set up them up to knock them down. You tried to present a false dichotomy between either boycotting evil completely or embracing it totally. It's not that simple, and so your arguments blow away in the slightest puff of air.

    And I never said I agreed with Google, just that I think I understand their position. It's a reasonable one for them to take. World domination is incomplete without owning China.

    --
    sigs, as if you care.
  10. Re:This is Amazing, so many uninformed statements by jrumney · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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.

    Do they also know that the servers outside China are censored? Because google.com is returning the same results as google.cn if you set your browser to prefer the Chinese language or add &hl=zh_CN to your query string.

  11. Re:The most telling admission by edumacator · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Personally I would love to see our companies espouse our cultural values throughout the world, but I think there are some issues with this idea of holding a company accountable to uphold "American Ideals."

    Private industry is made up of "the people of this country." So in actuality one should not distiguish the two.

    Isn't it then fair to say that the government shouldn't tell "people" how to manage their business? If Google were breaking the law, then you would have a valid point, but I don't know of any law they are breaking. Congress is trying to mandate that companies uphold the "ideals" of democracy. I wish companies would, but I don't think they should be forced to by the government.

    I don't want the government telling me how to view China. I'm personally appauld by China's actions, but that doesn't mean they should dictate that others should agree with me. If you don't like what Google is doing, don't use their services.

    The parent post is saying the government is trying to make companies follow policies they themselves don't follow. The defense of "favored" status Congress has given time and again is that to not do business with China at all would further alienate the Chinese, but now they are condemning Google for taking the same position.

    --
    An important change for education.
  12. Re:This is Amazing, so many uninformed statements by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    While I totally agree with you in principle, there is a line of thought that I haven't seen from Slashdotters. Yes, it is true that most people won't be searching for how to overthrow the govt. normally, but having a Chinese google.cn to handle the day-to-day requests of the people makes it much much easier for the govt. to monitor the people's actions when they search on google.com.

    It's improving (from the point of view of the Party), the SNR of dissidents on google.com.