Has Google Sold Out? And if so, Is It Cause for Concern?
The article explains that,
"This will require the company to abide by the rules of the world's most restricted internet environment. China is thought to have 30,000 online police monitoring blogs, chatrooms and news portals. The propaganda department is thought to employ even more people, a small but increasing number of whom are paid to anonymously post pro-government comments online. Sophisticated filters have been developed to block or limit access to 'unhealthy information', which includes human rights websites, such as Amnesty, foreign news outlets, such as the BBC, as well as pornography. Of the 64 internet dissidents in prison worldwide, 54 are from China.
"Google has remained outside this system until now. But its search results are still filtered and delayed by the giant banks of government servers, known as the great firewall of China. Type 'Falun Gong' in the search engine from a Beijing computer and the only results that can be accessed are official condemnations.
"Now, however, Google will actively assist the government to limit content. There are technical precedents. In Germany, Google follows government orders by restricting references to sites that deny the Holocaust. In France, it obeys local rules prohibiting sites that stir up racial hatred. And in the US, it assists the authorities' crackdown on copyright infringements."
. . .
"In an attempt to be more transparent than its rivals, Google said it would inform users that certain web pages had been removed from the list of results on the orders of the government."
Many thoughts come to mind.
I wonder whether Google informs users in Germany and France that certain web pages have been removed from the list of results on the orders of their respective governments, and, if not, why not. Copyright infringement is a whole other (fascinating and worthy) issue so I’m discussing only German and French censorship of opinion. I appreciate, of course, that Chinese censorship is a lot more onerous and extensive than any that occurs in Europe but I suggest the principle remains the same.
I also observe that since Google will continue to provide users with the option of searching via the original US-based website, it has—admittedly in perhaps a rather limited sense—not compromised its mission statement, which is to make all possible information available to everyone who has a computer or mobile phone. And that, if setting up google.cn does compromise its mission statement, it had already done so—albeit on a much smaller scale—when it cooperated with the European states.
The article continues,
"Executives have grudgingly accepted that this is the ethical price they have to pay to base servers in mainland China, which will improve the speed - and attractiveness - of their service in a country where they face strong competition from the leading mandarin search engine, Baidu."
Thereby illustrating that non-legally binding ethical imperatives usually (almost always?) take second place to the demands of profit maximization—at least for most businesses, and especially so for publicly-listed corporations. That said, is this in fact a bad outcome?
Google"acknowledged that this ran contrary to its corporate ethics, but said a greater good was served by providing information in China."
So does the policy run contrary to its corporate ethics or not?
"'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, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission.'"
Is it? And even if it is, I observe the happy coincidence that Google finds its profit-maximizing strategy consistent with its mission.
"Local bloggers were already wearily resigned to the change. 'What Google are doing is targeting commercial interests and skirting political issues,' said one of the country's most prominent, who writes under the name Black Hearted Killer. 'That by itself is no cause for criticism, but there is no doubt they are cowards.'"
Are they? And if they are, what does courage require of those who own Google stock? Should they sell their holdings? Or should they retain those holdings and campaign for a change in corporate policy? Or need they do nothing?