Google to block some searches in China

Company says it will censor politically sensitive terms to comply with Beijing’s policies.

I think this sucks.

Godwin be damned: I think that if Google was around during the Nazi regime and blocked searches about “Jews” and “concentration camps”, it would be a bad idea.

China is not Nazi Germany, but still, this is kowtowing to a despotic regime. (Of course, I know it makes business sense)

“Don’t do evil” my ass.

What do you guys think of this decision by Google?

I guess they might need to change it from “Don’t do evil” to “Don’t do evil, unless not doing evil prevents us from entering valuable enough markets.”

Censorship is evil, and it is immoral to support it. If any company on Earth could afford to say “fuck you” to a market over a moral issue, I would have thought it was Google. Guess I was wrong. This is big black on them in my view.

I meant a big black mark on them.

^^^ My exact thought upon hearing the news this morning.

This is absolutely absurd. Google, I thought you were better than that. This is no different from supporting the chinese censorship on their people . .amazing

Hmmm, so no one is willing to defend Google’s action?

By bending enough to Chinese censorship that they are allowed to compete in the Chinese marketplace, they make it less likely that the Chinese gov’t will develop and force thier people to use their own webrowser, which would undoubtably be more restrictive.

This is more or less the course the US has taken as a whole in China, turning a blind eye to the gov’ts abuses and continue to increase trade, in hopes that exposure to western markets/ideas/etc. will create a peaceful transition to a more liberal form of gov’t (and lining the pockets of western companies) despite China’s attempts to shield their people from what they see as the more dangerous products. So far, anyways, this strategy seems to be working. In anycase, it seems silly to get pissed at Google for following what has basically been the international consensus on how to deal with China across almost all Western gov’ts.

Well… a flashlight is better than total darkness, no?

As I understand, the Chinese government currently blocks Google altogether. I’m sure that Google is complying because otherwise, the poor folks in the PRoC would have no Google access whatsoever.

The only way to get China to open up to new ideas is to give them a taste and whet their appetite. Give them nothing, and they’ll never know what they’re missing. Shove it down their throats and they will fight back. I think it’s the right move.

But is this even a “taste” or “flashlight”? What reason is there to believe this will result in any more “subversive” information being available to the Chinese users? Or just more of what they already can get?

There’s also the aspect of respecting local laws where you do business.

Is Amazon wrong in refusing to sell Mein Kampf to German citizens? Are pornography vendors wrong to refuse shipment to conservative states/counties? For that matter, is the US government wrong to ban internet child porn from overseas where it’s legal?

There’s a world of difference between child porn and free speech. But Google will be running their servers within sovereign Chinese territory – should they just ignore Chinese law?

There’s no question in my mind that if they are run their servers and do business in China, they must follow chinese law.

The question is whether a company whose (informal) motto is “do no evil” should do business there at all if they must censor, which I feel is evil. IMHO, of course.

How does this actually work? The article says Google users in China won’t be able to use, say, “Falun Gong” as a search term. But does that mean they won’t ever be able to run a search that directs them to a Falun-Gong-related site? We all know how Internet searching can be an unpredictable process.

Also, will they be limited to a hermetically sealed PRC intranet? If I’m a Chinese user, can I or can I not get access to a foreign website?

Hopefully we’ll be able to access it (www.google.cn?) and see how it works ourselves. Well, those of us who know Chinese, which excludes me.

Even if you know Chinese, how do you work it with a Roman-letters keyboard?

The same way other foreign languages do: by typing in romanization.

It’s not the job of private companies to pursue political agendas. Google’s mistake is not that they tailor their content to be able to sell in China, Saudi Arabia or the US. Google’s mistake is creating an image of themselves as somehow pure and moral superior. While this strategy may capture some customers in the short run, it always comes back to bite you in the tail. Always. Not that it’s not nice to let them stew in the own fat.

Anyway. It seems to me the Chinese government is tilting against windmills here. They might make it less likely that someone accidentally stumbles on some material considered harmful, but I doubt they can prevent someone looking for specific material from finding it. You just cannot open the door just a tiny bit. It’s even pretty easy to find child porn if you want, and pretty much the whole globe is trying to censure that. Good luck China, in keeping out a whole bunch of material that is valued in much of the rest of the world. Not a chance.

But again, they may be doing the Chinese public more good by offering them a western controlled web browser, even if they have to captitualate to censorship to do it. In which case they’re doing good, not evil, at least in one interpretation.

As for the PR blowback, we’ll see, but I doubt Google will take to much of a hit for this.

Are the Chinese people better off, wrt freedom, with the censored Google than they would w/o any Google? I think they are. Good luck to the Chinese gov’t in trying to censor the internet. There have to be holes the size of houses in their nets somewhere.