Google tries not being 'evil'

13-01-2010

by Ralph Averbuch

Google's new stance on censorship suggests it won't kowtow to China's dictats any more.

There's not much getting away from mention of Google these days and, increasingly, it tends to veer towards comments that are less than complimentary about the company's size, dominance, business tactics, etcetera. In fact it's a whole re-run of the attitude change towards Microsoft when it got too big for comfort amongst the masses. Yet Google has done something surprising that's not part of the script. The company is threatening to pull its operations out of China after too much interference from Chinese authorities. It seems this decision has been partially prompted by the stories emerging of how a sophisticated hack was used to access some information from dissidents' email accounts run by Google. On top of this it appears that the company is simply sick and tired of being forced to compromise the way it serves up results to Chinese audiences. It may be filibuster to attempt to get Chinese authorities to back off. But that's unlikely going by recent reactions of the state. So it may genuinely be the case that Google effectively takes a massive business hit to stand up for a principle. It's just a pity that Google didn't make that choice before getting into bed with Chinese authorities in the first place, under such censorious terms. Of course, it now puts pressure on both Microsoft and Yahoo to follow Google's lead. It will boil down, as ever, to just how much each company values the potential revenues over upholding notions of universal rights to free speech for all people, everywhere. But it's unlikely to change Chinese policy. There will be local players which will quickly take up the slack, happy to abide by the rules laid down by the one party state.

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