Google.cn Still Remains In China

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."

Comments

Re:Too expensive to not be evil

[HangingChad]

Obviously not being evil is too expensive.

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'm just saying it's a little early to condemn Google before we get more facts.

But you are doing the search from a Chinese IP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google knows if your origin IP is chinese. I'm sure you get different results for google.cn if you are in china or out.

Re:Bad Move

[anyGould]

Does anyone here go a single day without using Google a dozen times at least? Can even the technically-adept people here get along easily without it? How about the other 95% of web users?

Well, I use Google quite extensively (lemme think, Gmail, Maps, Reader, Calendar, Documents, and general search). If I decided today that Google was Teh Evil, could I get away? Let's see:

Gmail: easy - I use it mainly as an aggregator for my "real" accounts (almost nothing comes addressed to the gmail account), and because of the nice web interface. Turn off the forwarding, pick everything up in PortableApps-Thunderbird. (Or I could use my host's inferior webmail, as a backup plan).

Maps/Earth: I'd miss these ones (again, because they work), but MapQuest or Bing Maps will work as well.

Reader: heck, any RSS reader will replace this. I think Thunderbird does RSS feeds (if we want to keep portable).

Calendar: I think there's a PortableApps for this - looks like Mozilla Sunbird. (Again, I'd miss some of the features, but it's totally doable.)

Documents: OpenOffice. (Again, also in PortableApps form). I don't use Docs for anything serious anyways.

general search: Pick whatever you like.

So, could I get away from Google Apps? Yep - PortableApps + USB key gives me pretty much the same portability and flexability (and gets me off the cloud). Now, it could be said that I'm trading one Overlord for another, but I imagine if I dug around a bit I'd find other alternatives as well.

That's the one advantage Microsoft has over Google - it's a lot harder to replace your operating system than your search provider.

The buck stops in China evidently...

[Chas]

Not that I was expecting any better from them. Too much money involved. Still, doesn't stop me from being disappointed anyhow.

Lots of multinationals have this problem.

[ErichTheRed]

Imagine if this wasn't censorship of search results that we were talking about. Instead, imagine that the Chinese government looked the other way while local officials demanded bribes for keeping the office utilities running. If you're a multinational company, those are the kind of things you need to deal with...and reconcile with a different set of ethics.

Companies need to decide whether or not they are willing to play by the local rules when they jump into an international market. Those bribes they pay may not be a good ethical choice, but they may make the company much more profitable. Since company shareholders are the only concern for most companies, they need to set aside their feelings and do what the local government says.

Personally, I think what they're doing is fine, simply because it's not our place to tell a foriegn government what to do. It's their country, and human rights abuses, censorship, Taiwan and the Dalai Lama shouldn't really matter to American citizens. That's how China chooses to keep their country in line (and growing economically at 10%+ per year, I might add.) It seems to work well for them, and even if it didn't, we can't tell them otherwise. Doing so puts us on the same Cold War era "keeping the world safe for democracy" bandwagon that hasn't worked for us in four wars since WW2. I've long held the belief that once we solve 100% of our social problems at home, then we can go lecture people around the world about how to behave.

Re:Google Reality Check

[swillden]

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

That's not necessarily true. A publicly-traded corporations primary obligation isn't to make a profit, it's to fulfill the goals laid out in the articles of incorporation and the prospectus that defined the public offering. In most cases, those documents say that the primary goal of the corporation is to make a profit, and that, then, is what the company's directors must focus on doing. But there are plenty of corporations, especially non-profits and for-profits that have a "social good" agenda, with different goals, and the directors of those corporations would be failing in their duty to their shareholders if they focused on profit at the expense of their stated goals.

Was "Don't be evil" part of Google's corporate charter? And if so, was it given an equal or higher priority than profitability? I don't know, but if so, then Google's directors have a legal obligation to abide by it.