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Google Admits China Censorship Was Damaging
pilsner.urquell writes to let us know about a wide-ranging interview with Google's founders from Davos, Switzerland. Larry Page and Sergey Brin admitted that allowing China to censor its search engine did harm to the company in its Western markets. Quoting the Guardian article: "Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr. Brin admitted yesterday: 'On a business level, that decision to censor... was a net negative.'" The reporter concludes that Google is unlikely to revise its Chinese censorship policy any time soon.
How many other CEOs a) admit mistakes or b) state that dealing with the dictatorial regime in China is not in their best interest.
s quare
... The Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution are located on the eastern side of Tiananmen Square. ...
But it was amusing to see the rationalizations from the Google employees and apologists for effectively collaborating with the Chinese government. Justify it as you will, Google was collaborating with the Chinese government, working hand in hand, to censor information.
For a look at the absurdity, see:
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananmen+
Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square is one of the largest city squares in the world. It is located on the central axis of old
When they take google.cn down then this will mean something more - right now we just have words, actions don't reflect what Brin is saying.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
... like the NEXT time they set up shop in China?
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
The problem is that we are living in a world where rigid ideologies are infecting everyone, from President's and CEOs to janitors and doormen. Everyone thinks they know what's best for everyone in the world. Everyone has their personal little grand unified theory of everything, be it Catholic or Islam, Capitalist or Socualist, Democrat or Republican.
;)
So when someone admits the real world is a place you have to sometimes make a comprimise (e.g. a censored Google is better than no Google for China), a lot of people are simply able to shift mental gears and deal with it. Their transmissions lock up and car analogies start exploding all over the place.
Not that I'm a fan of this administration, but look at some of the threads on Slashdot about some government policies. It's always the Apocalypse and the Coming Of Big Brother even when it turns out the summary completely misstated the truth of the matter. I swear, the next person who suggests that nationally consolidated driver's ID cards are "the mark of the Beast' is going to get my boot to their head.
Sure, guy. Limiting access to those blogs sure does help spread that message, doesn't it? Well, unless of course "human rights" or "democracy" are involved. Pesky human rights; they evidently have no value to Google. Democracy? What, you believe in controlling your own fate? Perish the thought. Groupthink is all the rage! Death to the unbelievers!
This is another reason I've also been moving from Yahoo recently; turning over people who don't toe the "official" line is just plain wrong....and as for whether the Chinese are using Google vs. Baidu? According to these numbers, yes. It looks like they ARE using Baidu, and that Google [publicly] wants to avoid taking them on. Whether those're just more Weasel Words or not remains to be seen.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
I agree with you. I found the wording he used distressing. For the guys that promised to do no evil, they continue to parse their words like a Microsoft spokesman. Forget what their position has done on a business level, how about on a moral level. Perhaps I am just naive.
:p It was on the Google Toilet Stalls
As long as they parse their words with the PRC just as much I don't mind. Sure the clear simple decision would be to refuse the Chinese market, until there is no censorship. Then they would be doing no evil, but they would also be in no position to do good for the people in China. As long as they are there, they can have influence. And seeing as they are in the informaion business, it is good business for them to slowly erode the censorship.
We are all just people.
Picture three supermarkets: One shoots its customers at random, at the drop of a hat. No signs, no notice; *BANG* THUD.
The second supermarket has clearly marked signs at the entrances: "Customers will be shot at random whilst shopping." You've given the customers notice of this, so all is well. Once again, every so often we'll hear *BANG* THUD.
The third supermarket doesn't shoot its customers.
Okay, how about an analogy that's slightly less flawed.
Picture three supermarkets. One claims to offer all of the products you would ever want, but in reality they don't carry anything organic, free from pesticides. If you ask, they assure you that such products do not exist. The second supermarket makes extra space on its shelves for the products it is not allowed to carry, giving you information about those products and the specific government regulations that forbade them from selling them to you. You are welcome to order the same foods from their identical stores in other countries if you're willing to wait a while longer for delivery.
The third supermarket offers every product you would ever want, but it is not allowed to exist in China.
Until Google came along, all of the supermarkets were of the first type. Google is the only company offering the second type in China. They decided this was better than the alternative, which was that the Chinese people wouldn't even know what they were missing. Thanks to Google, now they do.
I can connect to Google France, Google Japan, Google Germany and so forth. I used to be able to connect to Google China - you can even see it in google.com's search for Google China and the cache for it. But nowadays, it just redirects to Google.com. They don't want Westerners able to see what people can and can't search for in China. So what else is new, the corporate stooges are saying BS to the press, while in the back they are continuing to do what they do and are attempting to hide what they are doing.
Google admitted as much in their blog at a time, when they admitted that the U.S. page was still accessible to Chinese users most of the time. The decision wasn't "censored or nothing," it was "revenue or less revenue?" Google didn't compromise for the good of the Chinese people, they compromised in order to tap into the fat revenue stream that they would have otherwise missed.
With Google's technical skills, they almost certainly could have kept their page accessible to Chinese users most of the time, had they really wanted to. But doing so would have meant missing out on much of the revenue from that market, since money is a lot easier to restrict than Internet traffic. They made a straightforward choice: money, or ideals? They chose money.
I, personally, do not fault them for this; I think most people, given a choice between their "ideals" and money, would do the same thing. The only thing I think they're guilty of is hypocrisy. Had any other company done the same thing, I wouldn't have blinked an eye: most companies seek nothing but profit at any cost, and don't act any better than you would expect from such goals. (And many have done well by such dealings; the public has a short memory -- you can use a man for slave labor, then later sell cars to his grandchildren, and nobody will think less of you. Such is the world we live in.) However, Google billed itself, both to investors and the public, as having higher motives, and when they were put to the test they failed dismally.
There is no comparison between Google, and your hypothetical priest, because Google had a third option: they could have walked away from the dilemma, and simply refused to offer a censored version of their service, told their investors that they could not accept advertising revenue from China in clear conscience while maintaining their principles, and attempted to give Chinese users the best uncensored service that they could provide.
They didn't.
When it came time to choose between money and idealism, money won. For what it's worth, I'm fine with it, I just wish they would be more direct about their decisions and state their motivations more directly. It's only mildly irritating to see evil done these days, but it's substantially worse to see evil done while under the banner of good.
If your motive is profit, seek profit, and don't clothe your amorality behind a facade of good intentions. You can only have one primary goal. If you want profit, and profit leads you to deal with the Nazis, the Chinese, or the Devil himself, be proud; at the end of the day, at least you can say you didn't compromise, and you followed the path you had chosen to its end. Google can't even say that. They chose a direction, or so they say, but veered from it when the going got tough.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."