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Google Admits Compromising Principles in China
muellerr1 writes "Google co-founder Sergey Brin admitted that it had adopted 'a set of rules that we weren't comfortable with' in their Chinese activities. Though it doesn't yet sound like they're admitting to actually doing evil, it does appear that they are thinking about pulling out of China rather than compromise their 'do no evil' motto."
Google is one of the very few companies which have a chance to remain "morally good" while still being successful. They just need to know that the people appreciate their "don't be evil" credo. For those who care checkout http://web.amnesty.org/pages/internet-110506-actio n-eng.
regards
lukas
The law is also very flexible about allowing a company to determine what "shareholder interest" is. A large number of shareholders are interested in stock price and dividends but there are people who determine their investments beyond stock earning power.
Perhaps, but remember that Brin and Page issued an "Owner's Manual" for their stock when it was issued, and that it was issued in two different classes. Class A stock has much lower voting representation than Class B stock (a ratio of 1:10 voting weight). Class B stockholders are the ones with real power to steer Google, and Google's Class B stock is tightly held. Brin and Page together hold 33% of the Class B stock, which is enough to ensure that they can direct the company.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
Funny, I don't notice a date anywhere on your linked page, so how can we determine that Google had this on their site while censoring searches? In-fact, I went to that webpage, and this is what it currently says:
r =17795&topic=368
Does Google censor search results?
It is Google's policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so. When we remove search results for these reasons, we display a notice on our search results pages. Please note: For some older removals (before March 2005), we may not show a notice at this time.
http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answe
Nice try though. Plus, it could be argued that the wording in your linked page was on their American website, while the censoring occurs on their Chinese webpage. Then, as a previous poster stated, right on the Google.cn results page, it lets you know if there are any results that have been censored.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but had you bothered to translate the Google.cn page you linked to into English, you would see that they do infact notify their users that results have been removed.
a ges.google.cn%2Fimages%3Fq%3Dtiananmen&langpair=zh -CN%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8
http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fim
As shown in the (admittedly shitty) translation:
" According to local laws, regulations, and policies, not part of the search results show."
Babelfish shows the exact same thing, although you'll have to do that yourself since it appears I cannot link directly to a translated page like I can with Google.
So, with that in mind, how is Google censoring results without notifying their users, when it clearly says right on the page that results have been removed?
Google does tell the users that the results are cencored. They even got blasted by the state ran media in China for doing so. (it was by XingHua I think...
Right at the bottom of the page is this a rough translation is "according to local law and policies, some parts of the search results will not be shown".
regarding the video you posted, yes, ofcourse not a lot of students in China can be exactly sure what that picture is about, since they probably never seen it before. But that does not prevent them from knowing about the '89 masacare that took place. Some bad translation was in the video, somewhere after 1 min, the narrator says "the boy said 89","but the girl made no connection". However when the boy said 89 in Chinese, the girl actually answered "probably" in chinese. A few words makes a huge difference. It shows how students in China does know about this issue, even thou it never comes up in Chinese media.
Also, most Chinese does not want to do anything that will provoke the government. I don't know much about the backgrounds of the interview, but if a foriegn interviewer came to me to conduct an interview, asking me things that is very much sensitive to the government, I would just pretend to know nothing, since the governement could easily come the next day and expell me from the university without giving a valid reason. So in this interview, it is distinct possibility that the students might have guessed it was the 89 masacare, but pretended to not know about the issue, just so that they wont have to deal with the government.
Slavery was abolished in the British Empire by 1838; it was not abolished in the US till 1865. Women had the right to vote in New Zealand from 1893; in the US it was not until 1920 (with legislation at a federal level overturning territory legislation as late as 1887. Desegregation is associated with the US because segregation was...
Don't fool yourself: America had some early innovations, but has been very conservative ever since. It's what happens when you teach yourselves you're perfect already.
Look out!