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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."
I certainly hope that other companies, particularly Yahoo, which has been implicated in providing information to Chinese authorities leading to the arrest of political dissidents, will feel pressured by Google's recent announcement to be more candid about their own policies regarding operations in China. If our big Internet players were to stand up for what is right, it'd be a powerful statement for human rights.
Whatever the equities of Google's deal-with-the-devil agreement with the Chinese government, it speaks well of Google that they're even copping to the problem with knuckling under to censorship. Things obviously aren't as bad as they could be; things would be much worse if Brin were maintaining that what they did in China was the greatest thing ever. A company willing to question its politically controversial decisions publicly is probably not irretrievably evil. Whether it's moral is another question.
I'm a Chinese. I actually have relative live in china at that time who were heavily effected by the Massacre, I remember staying up 3 days straight watching the new hoping the sitution would improve. It did not, phone call were recieved that leave our family sob for months.
And you know what? Today, I ask myself which one I prefer. If I'm still in China, would I rather shows my child a website where the seach of that event simply returns no result, or would I want some prove that government still leave much work to be done, by pointing at the note in a google search page that shows me they are forced to censor something.
Which way to better let my child about the importances of freedom and the price we paid just to get make progress.
I fails to find any alternative to shows easily show prove, and easily be aware of what we are being hidden from.
I choose google.