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Google.cn Still Remains In China

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-wait-a-minute dept.

hackingbear writes "Google appears to be content to remain in China doing business as usual while it finds a way to work within the system, according to one of the search giant's founders. This despite a strong statement 30 days ago that it would stop censoring search results in China and possibly pull its business out of that country. And the company is still unwilling to confirm or deny if the alleged attacks were carried out by the Chinese government. 'I don't actually think the question of whether [the attacks were performed by] the Chinese government is that important,' Brin said. (That's the difference between state-sponsor vs. individual hacking. Why is that not important?) In the mean time, shortly after we celebrated google.cn lifting censorship, the exact same censorship has been quietly re-enabled as proved by this Chinese search query on June 4, despite the lack of any concrete actions by the Chinese government, which has so far made only useless general and standard statements on the matter."

14 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. That didn't take long. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And here we thought Google had a strong backbone to stand up to china. Apparently not.

    1. Re:That didn't take long. by JohnFen · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't care what goes on behind the scenes. I care about the end result. And this end result, while unsurprising, sucks.

      Google's soul is still sold, and they haven't reduced their evil level one bit. So sad.

    2. Re:That didn't take long. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      This was for Google a strategic blunder of epic proportions. Never go on the attack if you can't follow up on it. Before this all happened, China had to consider the possibility that Google would pull out or refuse to censor, but now China knows that Google will bow to their every wish. Good going!

    3. Re:That didn't take long. by Virak · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's because the summary is terrible, and so is the person who wrote it, and also the Slashdot editors, for posting it.

      Google appears to be content to remain in China doing business as usual while it finds a way to work within the system, according to one of the search giant's founders. This despite a strong statement 30 days ago that it would stop censoring search results in China and possibly pull its business out of that country.

      The usage of "despite" here would suggest there's some sort of contradiction betweeen these sentences, however Google's original post said:

      We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

      Which is to say, the lack of obvious action thus far isn't particularly notable. When it's been half a year and there's been no further news, then you can start bitching, but not now.

      In the mean time, shortly after we celebrated google.cn lifting censorship, the exact same censorship has been quietly re-enabled

      And this part is just outright false. They were never disabled in the first place, as noted even by several comments in the article that was linked to there. Furthermore, Google's announcement never said anything like that they'd be immediately removing the censorship.

      Basically, there's nothing of note here and anyone whining about how Google hasn't pulled out and uncensored their search engine and organized an elite team to overthrow the oppressive Chinese government and given everyone on Earth their own personal unicorn has gotten vastly inflated expectations due to poor reading comprehension.

  2. Too expensive to not be evil by hobbes75 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Obviously not being evil is too expensive... maybe that explains the amount of evil in the world in general.

    1. Re:Too expensive to not be evil by russotto · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It could also be, "Leave and we'll kill your family." Or economic threats, or they could have threatened anyone who ever worked in the China offices with arrest and prosecution, they have a lot of ugly tools at their disposal. Probably not, but when you're dealing with a government you don't always know the whole story.

      I don't know if China would mistreat former Google employees if Google simply left. But I'd say there's a darned good chance they would detain and otherwise mistreat Google employees if Google were to start openly claiming that China was behind the attacks; you just can't expect them to badmouth China's government while they still have people there.

  3. Uh by mikkelm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Aren't these submissions supposed to be moderated to keep these walls of partially intelligible text off the main page?

  4. Right. by TheSpoom · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Top businesspeople in company overrule moral arguments from staff in order to ensure future profits.

    News at eleven.

    --
    It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
    - E. Debs
  5. Bad Move by UndyingShadow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The quickest thing Google can do to lose the confidence of its users is be Two-Faced. With all the recent privacy concerns, if Google starts acting one way after saying "Don't be Evil," it's going to make everyone question if Google can be trusted. Can they?

  6. Doing a deal with the devil by NetNinja · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Doing business with a country where freedom of information is counter productive to your business model makes no sense.

    when money is God WHO CARES RIGHT?

  7. My guess: by Hurricane78 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Some special Chinese agent made a visit at Brin’s house at night, reminding him that they could make him disappear “just like that”.

    I hope not. But it would not surprise me a bit if this was how it happened.

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  8. When will Slashdot stop censoring Chinese? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    and all the other languages that aren't written in ASCII. Unicode has been around for twenty years FFS.

  9. Re:Mixed results by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Not Mixed Results, obvious censorship.

    I search "tiananmen square tank" on google.com, go to images, I get over 100 images.
    I search "tiananmen square tank" on google.cn, go to images, I get over 1 images, which when clicked on, gets me a curt line of chinese text, instead of whatever page that image came from.

    So there is nothing mixed about it, google is censoring chinese communications on behalf of the chinese government. There is no doubt in my mind they do, and will continue to do whatever Chinese , U.S. or other governments ask them to do. Someday the U.S. will concoct some emergency, and will require google to give them all of their user data, and google will comply. So act accordingly.

  10. Google Reality Check by i_want_you_to_throw_ · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Google, as a publicly traded company, has only one obligation: to make a profit for shareholders. Let that soak in.

    In doing so they have to do things like bow to the Chinese, track all of your searches, etc. It's business folks!

    Unfortunately that also means that "do no evil", is more of a guideline than a rule. Maybe they should change their motto to "We do less evil than everyone else"

    Really I'm amazed that anyone is surprised by this.