Behind Google's Recent Decision About China

yuhong writes "This article by The Independent takes a look at what is behind the recent decisions made by Google regarding China, particularly regarding Sergey Brin, born in the USSR, [and whose origins] played a big part in this decision. From the article: 'He's always had an emotional tug within him, saying "we shouldn't be making compromises," says Ken Auletta, the author of Googled: The End of the World As We Know It.'"

Comments

Corporate warfare...

[Capt James McCarthy]

Could these actions have been all started by Google's largest competitor Microsoft? I mean it's not out of the realm of possibilities to think that MS would love to have the Chinese market all to themselves, by having a back room deal with the Chinese Govt to target Google.

Re:not surprised at Brin

[Lunix Nutcase]

I am a stern opponent to anything communist/socialist in nature,

So you eschew all police and fire services and use no public utilities correct? Wouldn't want you to be a hypocrite and use those "ebil" socialist services.

Re:Hate google or not

[CAIMLAS]

There are a couple big, major differences between Japan of 20 years ago and China of today.

1) China is not limited militarily, either externally or externally.
2) China is a cruel and totalitarian society/government in many ways, both towards their subjects (jailing them with cruel treatments for minor offenses) and towards outsiders (Tibet).
3) China has repeatedly ignored the desires of its allies and trade partners in the quest for more profit (selling arms to Iran/wherever). This goes hand-in-hand with numerous examples of military espionage against the West (and the US in particular).
4) They have a gender-disproportionate populace (more males than females) which is historically very highly correlated with military expansionism.
5) They disregard any international interests in their reverse engineering and re-implementation of anything designed elsewhere for the purposes of stealing the technology.
6) They control many of the third world UN delegates and maneuver to undermine any efforts of said organization (climate change, arms, pollution, etc.).
7) Chinese culture is incredibly racist and xenophobic. They make Old European mores on racism look quaint.
8) Unlike Japan, they do not live on a small island with limited resources and do not rely upon the good will of others for their self-continuation in commerce.
9) China has been imperialist for the better part of a decade, with colonies all along he eastern coast of Africa (why many of the US yuppie expats living in Shanghai seem to think that the US is an evil imperial regime and love China, even now that Bush is out of office, is beyond me).
10) Potentially most important to the US and the West at large, they have no cultural respect for the US as Japan did (does).

So yeah, it's a slightly different ballgame than it was with Japan. Slightly. I would argue that most of the reasons for China's bleak future more heavily support violent Chinese expansion.