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Google Shareholders Reject Censorship Proposal

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the keeping-it-real dept.

prostoalex writes "At the annual shareholder meeting, Google put forth for voting a proposal for the company not to engage in self-censorship, resist by all legal means the demands to censor information, inform the user in case their information was provided to the government, and generally not to store sensitive user data in the countries with below average free speech policies. As this proposal, if passed, would effectively mean the end of Google's China operations, the shareholders rejected the document at the recommendation of the Board of Directors."

2 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And there you have it by matt4077 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You might want to consider that this was actually proposed by one of their shareholders. That's a nice answer to all those "if a company forgoes profit for doing good, it's a crime against capitalism and shareholders" comments I regularly see on slashdot. However, this isn't really "doing evil" but rather "not committing do doing good". Google is still free to implement these measures, they are just not forced to do it. From a management perspective, it leaves more options on the table.

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    Fleur de Sel
  2. No need to get out of China by pipatron · · Score: 4, Interesting

    not to engage in self-censorship, resist by all legal means the demands to censor information, inform the user in case their information was provided to the government, and generally not to store sensitive user data in the countries with below average free speech policies. As this proposal, if passed, would effectively mean the end of Google's China operations

    I fail to see how this would end their operations in china.

    • It's not self-censorship if they are forced by law to do it.
    • They can resist by all legal means to censor information, but if it's illegal to display a certain type of information, they are complying with the law.
    • As far as I know (I may be wrong here), Google need not submit any user information to the Chinese government.
    • ...nor do they need to store user data in China in order to operate there, at least no more than a temporary cache couldn't solve (where temporary means a couple of minutes for each user)

    Or what did I miss?

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