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Google Shareholders Reject Censorship Proposal
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."
Google should just pull out of China and, in secret, play cupid between Microsoft and China. Microsoft is dying to get in on Google's market, and China requires a company with very little scruples to do its bidding. Red China and Redmond. I'm thinking match made in heaven. I'm sure Vista Live would be more than happy to implement China's new online game playtime restrictions at the kernel level. Even the Zune is probably an amazing little gadget to people who have lived in abject poverty for all of their lives. China can certainly spread venemous propaganda against the already uncooperative Google and thwart any future web-based office solutions in the country, a coup for MS Office. While Microsoft continues to spiral into the dumper with stale hubris here in the states, they could eventually relocate operations completely to China. Then in WWIII when we duke it out with China, we can all feel better knowing we're going after true evil, like the good old days in WWII instead of all this bullying in the desert of late. Imagine an enemy waving big red flags with the windows logo displayed fearsomely across its face. True terror. But now that China has moved all of it's important military software to Windows, a concerted effort from script kiddies around the world should be able to crash their whole system within days. If we are victorious, we bring down an oppressive government and a software monopoly in one fell swoop.
Or Google could just stay in China and bank off of over a billion people too docile and controlled to change their world. Business as usual.