Slashdot Mirror
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."
From their FAQ: I thought everyone on Slashdot hated the RIAA, the MPAA, and Microsoft. Why do you keep hyping CDs, movies, and Windows games?
Big corporations are what they are. They sell us cool stuff with one hand and tighten the screws on our freedoms with the other. We hate them every morning and love them every afternoon, and vice versa. This is part of living in the modern world: you take your yin with your yang and try to figure out how to do what's right the best you can. If you think it has to be all one way or the other, that's cool, share your opinions, but don't expect everyone else to think the same.
Nobody is perfect, not even Google.
It's easy to admit you did something bad after the first few large paychecks for compromising your beliefs. I'm sure that pile of cash will soothe their guilt over the decision.
He made these comments many many months after people started talking about this, and it's probable he only did it now because the criticism was getting to a point where it was beginning to affect their other business. If they really felt it was so wrong for them to do it, they either would have pulled the plug much earlier or not gone in to China under those conditions in the first place.
If they pull out of China, it will be for business reasons, not moral ones. Sure, they get to act like they're doing it so they won't be "evil," but they'll really be doing it because they're afraid the bad publicity the China issue has been generating and will continue to generate will drag down their numbers in other areas.
How will the shareholders feel if they pull out of China? Would that be acting in the shareholders' best interests? I'm not sure if ignoring a possible 1.3 billion people would be the best for them in the long run.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
It sounds like you're saying that since greed is universal, it's acceptable to help an oppressive regime in the name of profit.
I know I'm going from zero to Godwin in only ten seconds, but the Nazis were just doing their jobs, too. Obviously there is a huge difference between filtering search results and gassing people and putting them in mass graves, but the logic doesn't improve any as the severity decreases.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Google complies with the DMCA, which requires it censor certain search results (for example, "kazaalite" http://www.google.com/search?q=kazaalite will display a notice at the bottom indicating search results were removed).
Admittedly, it doesn't go as far as China's censorship, but this is a slippery slope. Why is censorship there "evil", but censorship here is not? Google is complying with the law. Yes, I think it's a bad law. But since when is obeying the law evil? Why is it up to Google to crusade against government policy? Are they some kind of political super-hero?
Google has employees in China. I can imagine how the treatment of these employees might be used to the advantage of the Chinese government if Google is weighing whether to pull out. It would be truly dirty for the government to threaten the welfare of former google employees in discussions with the management, and it would lead to quite an international conundrum. At the same time, it is possible. China isn't exactly known for protecting human rights. Thoughts?
After making such statements, they have no choice but to pull out now.
Many companies are starting to follow Google's lead in many ways and on many things. If they say they are considering pulling out and then fail to do it, the disappointment in Google will be enormous. If Google lived and prospered everywhere EXCEPT China, that could only serve to make Google look good and China look bad.
I feel pretty much the same about IP and DRM issues in the world where if the world refuses and legislates against IP and DRM leaving only the US with such restrictive laws, it will really make the US look bad and evil.
Is a publicly traded company will see how big their balls are when the stock holders get involved.
EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
No, there is this third option.
C) Don't bow to the Chinese government, they will not allow the site. They are the ones denying the Chinese people access to Google, not Google. Which means Google is doing no evil, but the Chinese government is.
You can't sugarcoat "Agree to censor" enough to make it not evil, sorry.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
And yet even if they pull out of China for purly business reasons they wouldn't be doing evil. (Unless you consider successfully running a business to be evil.) "Don't be evil" != "Be good"
As far as I can tell Google continued its "Do no evil" policy in China. They didn't take anything away from Chinese users- they merely offered a new Chinese service that openly filters results. How many Chinese search engines mention that they filter results? When your alternatives are to let the Chinese filter Google for you (making your search engine slow and unusable, and hiding that results are filtered) or filter it yourself (so people actually use your search engine, and tell people you are censoring data), what would you do? Google isn't hurting the Chinese- (Unlike Yahoo!, which gives the Chinese government personal data) it just can't help them much.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
I don't understand why there's anger at Google for obeying Chinese laws. Do I agree with those laws? Hell no. But business is business. Google doesn't make money from fostering democracy in foreign lands. They make money from selling ads. China is potentially a very large market, and so Google is doing what it has to as a profit-oriented venture.
If you feel the need to blame anyone, blame the dictators. Google is just doing business.
And before this discussion degenerates into WWII analogies, remember that Google is just a damn search engine and what's being repressed are just frigging web pages. No human is being abused or tortured by Google's actions.
The reaction I've seen on this site on others to Google's decision is way out of line to what was done.
I have no doubt that China will need to liberalize their government. If they want to be an effective technological power, they will need smart people and that means increasingly free access to information.
of why I still refuse to trust Google with my information. "Do no evil" - except when it hurts the shareholder's bottom line. Google is still a public corporation and no matter what the employees profess to strive for the company exists to create profits. I am pretty surprised that Google does not have a 10 year policy of erring on the side of morality to prove to skeptics like me that their motto is more than just marketing hype. To me it appears that having a stock price over $300.00 / share is the real priority.
-SmR
Google drops conservative sites from Google News. Interesting that 98% of all political donations by Google employees went to support Democrats. Also, Al Gore is a senior adviser to Google.
Now, I'm not playing a partisan finger-pointing game. But these kinds of "censorship" tactics give the appearance of "evil" worse than that which they are trying to avoid, IMO. Especially when there seems to be political motives. If some news site posts factual news, real honest truth, then I don't see how you can object to it on any basis just because you don't happen to like it. That holds whether the truth hurts the political Right or the political Left.
Constitutionally Correct
Taking a moral path is not about always being right. It is about always striving to be right & taking the care to reevaluate situations based on the current and future situations. I'm just glad there are still companies who know the M word.
If he's doing it for business reasons, then you probably have a very high opinion of capitalism. However, if it's indeed business reasons, one would have to wonder why Microsoft, Yahoo, et al have not been pulling out too.
If they pull out of China, it will be for business reasons, not moral ones.
And it's up to all of us to make sure that good morals = good business.
What?
There really is no externally observable difference between morality and publicity in this case. Their motto is "don't be evil." So they've set up their business so that being evil will generate a disproportionate amount of bad publicity. They've organized everything so that morality and publicity are inextricable: more so than in ordinary businesses. That in itself is admirable. But in the end, why does it matter what their internal motivations are? Why do you care? If we reward companies that do good and punish those that do bad, more will do good. If we punish those that do good with cynicism then there is no (business) reason for them to do good.
Uh? they weren't denying censoring searches, it was written in plain text (chinese though) on the frigging result pages.
What they were denying was that it was evil, or that "bringing limited informations" was a worse evil than "not bringing any information at all". And I, for one, agreed with google on that one: most chinese don't care that their search results are censored, as long as Google only censors it's chinese-based services and clearly states that the results are filtered it can only bring a better content and a better awareness to the chinese.
If tomorrow my own country decided to start filtering information, I'd be hella glad if Google kept on feeding me with (filtered) search result if it told me that the results were filtered.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
>Why couldn't you see this was a bad idea from the start?
Given what little we've heard about the internal debates at Google, they were crystal clear that it was a bad idea but decided the alternatives were even worse:
Problem. Chinese people lack access to non-governmental information
Answer. Do something that results in their government shutting down Google altogether.
Should you choose your actions based on their effects or on your principles? Ethicists could argue either side of that until you ran out of the room in boredom. Google chose, or tried to choose, the greatest good for the greatest number. We can all guess what rms would have done in their place.
If you actually had any morals, you would have realized that in the first place.
You mean you've never done anything wrong, that you knew was wrong at the time, and then later realized that you just can't live with it and have to fix it?
I'm not saying that's what's going on here, I have no idea whether or not Google is actually going to change it's approach to China, and I have no idea what the real motivations will be if they do, but I think it's important to remember that decisions are made by people, and even very moral people make mistakes. The way you can tell that they're very moral people is that they can't just leave it at that, they fix their mistakes if at all possible. It takes a great deal of moral courage to admit that you made a mistake and did a morally reprehensible thing, but admitting to it is a prerequisite to correcting it.
In this particular situation, I can see how the mistake could be made, pretty easily. The moral question isn't as clear cut as many here seem to think. Which will really help the Chinese people more, a censored search service or no search service? I also think Google made the wrong decision, but I can see how easy it would be to justify the one they made, particularly given the high incentive to do business in China.
If Google ends their censorship in China, it may well be for purely business reasons, and the moral issues may just be a smokescreen, but to presume that *must* be the case is excessively cynical. Don't attribute to malice (or evil) what can be adequately explained by incompetence (or error).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The U.S. is not perfect (voting citizen speaking here) but it is damned good.
You can insult the President, swear at the VP and still go home to your family. Try that in another country.
While the U.S. is slowly dying, it has been a wonderful place. Sadly the Republic turned into a Democracy and finally now into Lawyer and Mob rule. Sad days are ahead but looking back, we have changed the world. Slavery, woman's rights, equality, free speech.....thanks to a bunch of rebels in boats.