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We're Staying In China, Says Microsoft

Posted by Soulskill on from the swinging-the-ethics-bat dept.

ericb tips an article at the Guardian which begins: "Hopes that Google's forthright stand on censorship in China would inspire other companies to follow suit appeared unfounded today, with the move instead threatening to widen the rift between some of the world's most powerful internet companies. Microsoft, which has considerable interests in the country, including its Bing search engine, responded directly to criticism by Google's co-founder Sergey Brin, who this week accused the company of speaking against human rights and free speech. Brin, who pressed for the closing down of Google's self-censored Chinese search engine, said yesterday: 'I'm very disappointed for them in particular. I would hope that larger companies would not put profit ahead of all else. Generally, companies should pay attention to how and where their products are used.' Microsoft rejected Brin's critique, saying it would continue to obey local laws on censorship in China."

2 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. So? by Aphoxema · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    I don't see a problem here; proprietary software is for proprietary minds.

    --
    "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
  2. Don't Bother by Petersko · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "I'm kind of torn by this whole China/Google/Microsoft thing. While I'm not a fan of the Chinese government, who are we to say what they should and shouldn't allow? Would we want a Chinese company to come into our country and tell our government what to do? While I've seen a great deal of discussion about human rights surrounding these stories, I've seen precious little about sovereignty."

    I'm big on the idea of moral relativism, and I believe that just because we value something it does NOT mean that another country should value it as well. In fact, a while back I went as far as to suggest that perhaps a country that doesn't have freedom of speech might not need to be "corrected" on the topic.

    I was modded so far down that some sort of anti-troll filter kicked in and nobody at my work could post to slashdot for 30 days.

    That's the day when I realized that a lot of people on slashdot use mod points to punish people they disagree with. It's so much more handy than discussing things.

    Then again, maybe it was me. I see you're doing alright.