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?"

Comments

Re:Picture is worth 1k words

[tpgp]

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.

We need FCPA-2.0

[mi]

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...

That's a bit misleading

[Reality Master 201]

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.

You're mostly right...

[aug24]

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.

An opportunity for ... what did he say!?

[acousticiris]

"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.

Re:Huh?

[RealProgrammer]

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.

Re:The most telling admission

[edumacator]

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.