Who Said Censorship Doesn't Pay ?
Google puts profit ahead of human rights
The following story was found at PajamasMedia:
Google officially launching services in ChinaJan. 24, 2006 (KRT News delivered by Newstex) -- SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Google announced that it is officially launching its services in China, a move that will require the Internet firm to subject itself to self-censorship. Google is one of the last large U.S. Internet companies to officially set up shop inside China. The delay reflects months of internal wrangling over how to balance business interests against its distaste at having to comply with China's restrictive speech policies.For now, the company is making what one executive described as a "targeted entry," offering four of its core services, but not several others. Some Chinese Internet users will be able to access the www.google.cn Web site starting sometime Wednesday. Google needs to compete in the quickly emerging and potentially vast Internet search market in China. But until now, the only way that Chinese users could access the company's services was through its Chinese and English language Web sites, which are based in the United States and subject to filtering and censorship by Chinese officials. Often the Web sites run slow, Google said. Moving their Web servers into China should improve the availability of Google's services, the company said. "Google is mindful that governments around the world impose restrictions on access to information," Google Senior Policy Counsel Andrew McLaughlin said in a statement. "In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to local law, regulation or policy. "While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission," McLaughlin added, "providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission." Owing to the delicate nature of the move, Google only briefed news reporters about its decision on background, and then released a carefully worded statement. Google executives Larry Page and Sergey Brin were at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, and were not expected to comment on the decision. Other U.S. Internet companies -- including Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) -- are already established in China. But Google's entrance has been highly anticipated because of the company's global influence and its stated "Do No Evil" motto. "Google's dilemma with China is a near-textbook case study on the deep question of how much assistance, if any, companies chartered in free societies should render to regimes that censor political and cultural expression," said Jon Zittrain, an assistant professor of entrepreneurial legal studies at Harvard Law School who has studied Chinese censorship. The human rights group Reporters Without Borders immediately condemned the move. The group's longstanding position has been that U.S. companies should not do business in China as long as it's ruled by a repressive regime. "Google is following along the lines of other Internet giants and bending to the rules of Communist regimes and going against the original, democratic guidelines under which they were founded,'' said Tala Dowlatshahi, the New York representative for the group. "At some point, they should draw the line and say no." Google's announcement surprised no one. The company has been telegraphing this move since last year, when it announced the planned opening of a research and development center, hired a top China expert from Microsoft and opened a sales office. But what was unknown until now was how Google would make its move. For now, Google is limiting its China services to Web and image searching, local searching and news. The company will not offer its e-mail, blogging, video or message group services out of China. Google will voluntarily censor its own search results. The company has compiled information on the types of Web sites and phrases China finds offensive, based on information from third parties and by observing the behavior of China's Internet filtering mechanisms. Among other things, Google will voluntarily censor information on the "three T's" -- Taiwan independence, Tibet independence and Tiananmen Square. "We intend to disclose to users when information has been removed from our search results in response to local laws and regulations," McLaughlin said in the statement. Google makes similar concessions in other countries. In Germany, for example, a Google search for a specific Web site that allegedly contains Nazi content returns a page that says that, for legal reasons, the Web site is not available. Google's decision not to place any e-mail servers in China is a calculated move intended to shield it from the type of trouble that befell Yahoo last year. Human rights activists blamed Yahoo for the jailing of a Chinese journalist after the company identified him as the owner of a Yahoo Mail account allegedly used to relay the contents of a secret government order. Yahoo said at the time that it was required to operate under local laws and had no choice but to cooperate with police. Google also intends to store some records of its Web server activity outside China so that authorities cannot access them. Google's late entrance into the Chinese market has allowed competitors such as Baidu and Yahoo China -- now owned by e-commerce company Alibaba -- to secure strong footholds while Google's market share has dropped. Baidu, in which Google owns a small stake, is the Internet search leader in China with as much as 30 percent of the market, said Dick Wei, an analyst for JPMorgan Technology Research in Hong Kong. Google and Yahoo have about 20 percent, he said. Wei said Baidu benefits by being perceived as a local company, while Google is seen as foreign company. Baidu is more popular with teenagers, while Google is favored by university students and higher-income users, he said. |
Google's actions have caused a stir in the blogosphere. HogOnIce has cancelled his Adsense account and won't use Google as his default search. Babalu Blog has done the same. I'm sure more will follow.
Here at Blog MyyyyyAsssss, I'm stalling while I try to take this all in. My Adsense Ads remain and I continue to Google my buns off when I need to find something. There are other fine search engines out there that can be used. Now - where did I put them?