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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."
If Google is not evil and China is, then it's just logical that they'd pull out. We wouldn't want a rift in the space-time continuum now, would we?
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.
Googlasia went public today sporting a motto "Do As Little Evil As Possible". Stocks soared from the opening price.
It will be interesting to see how this holds against their primary competitor, Microsoft which has embraced the Chinese market. They do not stand to lose their image or their corporate motto of "Screw Everyone."
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Unless you consider successfully running a business to be evil,
Duh... we're liberals.
This too, will end.
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.