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Google Admits China Censorship Was Damaging
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Jan 27, 2007 05:26 PM
from the not-being-evil dept.
from the not-being-evil dept.
pilsner.urquell writes to let us know about a wide-ranging interview with Google's founders from Davos, Switzerland. Larry Page and Sergey Brin admitted that allowing China to censor its search engine did harm to the company in its Western markets. Quoting the Guardian article: "Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr. Brin admitted yesterday: 'On a business level, that decision to censor... was a net negative.'" The reporter concludes that Google is unlikely to revise its Chinese censorship policy any time soon.
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[+]
Politics: Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007 545 comments
Vexorian writes "Is there direct or indirect censorship in the media towards delicate but important topics? Project censored lists 25 stories that did not seem to get the attention they deserved. Whether intentionally or not, for the most part the media skipped over these important topics. From the article: 'Throughout 2005 and 2006, a large underground debate raged regarding the future of the Internet. More recently referred to as network neutrality, the issue has become a tug of war with cable companies on the one hand and consumers and Internet service providers on the other. Yet despite important legislative proposals and Supreme Court decisions throughout 2005, the issue was almost completely ignored in the headlines until 2006.1 And, except for occasional coverage on CNBC's Kudlow & Kramer, mainstream television remains hands-off to this day'."
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Agreed.. but why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The "Do no evil" policy doesn't just mean to do no evil when no profits are at stake (like randomly killing puppies). It means to do no evil even if profits are at stake.
Censoring people is morally wrong. When we start playing the game of "the ends justify the means" we start getting into flawed logic like that which started our recent Iraq War (i.e. it is OK
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Ok, lets take this to a logical extreme. Lets say that I can profit by joining a group that tortures people for money. And I can't join unless I also torture people. Is it not morally wrong to torture people in this case, if I can
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Worst case scenario if Google censors their index so the Chinese public have access to it: Information (that an arbitrary entity deems acceptable) is more accesible
Worst case scenario if Iran has nuclear arms: millions of people die
Of course you're only making a point, but the first situation is arguably the right thing to do; they are in no way making things worse. Your example can have devastation consequences and so can be considered Bad Thing(TM).
They had a third path. (Score:5, Interesting)
Google admitted as much in their blog at a time, when they admitted that the U.S. page was still accessible to Chinese users most of the time. The decision wasn't "censored or nothing," it was "revenue or less revenue?" Google didn't compromise for the good of the Chinese people, they compromised in order to tap into the fat revenue stream that they would have otherwise missed.
With Google's technical skills, they almost certainly could have kept their page accessible to Chinese users most of the time, had they really wanted to. But doing so would have meant missing out on much of the revenue from that market, since money is a lot easier to restrict than Internet traffic. They made a straightforward choice: money, or ideals? They chose money.
I, personally, do not fault them for this; I think most people, given a choice between their "ideals" and money, would do the same thing. The only thing I think they're guilty of is hypocrisy. Had any other company done the same thing, I wouldn't have blinked an eye: most companies seek nothing but profit at any cost, and don't act any better than you would expect from such goals. (And many have done well by such dealings; the public has a short memory -- you can use a man for slave labor, then later sell cars to his grandchildren, and nobody will think less of you. Such is the world we live in.) However, Google billed itself, both to investors and the public, as having higher motives, and when they were put to the test they failed dismally.
There is no comparison between Google, and your hypothetical priest, because Google had a third option: they could have walked away from the dilemma, and simply refused to offer a censored version of their service, told their investors that they could not accept advertising revenue from China in clear conscience while maintaining their principles, and attempted to give Chinese users the best uncensored service that they could provide.
They didn't.
When it came time to choose between money and idealism, money won. For what it's worth, I'm fine with it, I just wish they would be more direct about their decisions and state their motivations more directly. It's only mildly irritating to see evil done these days, but it's substantially worse to see evil done while under the banner of good.
If your motive is profit, seek profit, and don't clothe your amorality behind a facade of good intentions. You can only have one primary goal. If you want profit, and profit leads you to deal with the Nazis, the Chinese, or the Devil himself, be proud; at the end of the day, at least you can say you didn't compromise, and you followed the path you had chosen to its end. Google can't even say that. They chose a direction, or so they say, but veered from it when the going got tough.
Parent
It was a nobel ideal. (Score:3, Funny)
I would consider being evil a matter of perception?
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Co-founder Larry Page said: "We always consider what to do. But I don't think we as a company should be making decisions based on too much perception."
I would consider being evil a matter of perception. I'm sure all the money Google has received tells them they aren't being evil though, so I guess thats whose perception they care about.
Smells like... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Smells like... (Score:5, Insightful)
Say you pick between two lines at the grocery store. By the time you're two-thirds of the way through the line, you realize it's moving more slowly than the other. Your decision was a net negative, but that doesn't mean you leave your line and join the other. Sometimes we make mistakes but have to stick with them.
Parent
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Sure, like segregation.
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Google can apologise all it wants to,
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I personally feel any company assisting in keeping the oppressed from disseminating their beliefs is not one I choose to do business with.
You might not be American, but if you feel that way, then what are you doing to stop our government's censorship of information [slashdot.org]? Even worse than Google, the information we are being provided with is not just censored but doctored. Compa
Re:Smells like... (Score:5, Interesting)
The second supermarket has clearly marked signs at the entrances: "Customers will be shot at random whilst shopping." You've given the customers notice of this, so all is well. Once again, every so often we'll hear *BANG* THUD.
The third supermarket doesn't shoot its customers.
Okay, how about an analogy that's slightly less flawed.
Picture three supermarkets. One claims to offer all of the products you would ever want, but in reality they don't carry anything organic, free from pesticides. If you ask, they assure you that such products do not exist. The second supermarket makes extra space on its shelves for the products it is not allowed to carry, giving you information about those products and the specific government regulations that forbade them from selling them to you. You are welcome to order the same foods from their identical stores in other countries if you're willing to wait a while longer for delivery.
The third supermarket offers every product you would ever want, but it is not allowed to exist in China.
Until Google came along, all of the supermarkets were of the first type. Google is the only company offering the second type in China. They decided this was better than the alternative, which was that the Chinese people wouldn't even know what they were missing. Thanks to Google, now they do.
Parent
Re:Smells like... (Score:5, Insightful)
They can stop censoring at any time. They can refuse to do it. They can't undo the damage that has been done, but they can stop doing more.
The amount of credibility that they have lost so far is a sunk cost, but by continuing to do it, they are loosing more. Their argument is "we did something wrong, and we are still doing it because the amount of credit we will get for stopping isn't enough." That isn't an argument from principle. It's saying that they won't do the right thing because it doesn't gain them enough. They will gain more by staying evil than by being good, so that's what they choose to do.
Parent
Re:Smells like...a bad analogy (Score:2)
If you are on a roadtrip and realize you've made a driving error what do you do? You figure out the road you should be on and then change your course immediately. You don't keep driving in the wrong direction.
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Now as far as making money, a company that i
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He said "On a business level, that decision to censor... was a net negative.". My interpretation is that the decision to censor in china hurt their business (ie money making ability), yet the fact that they continue to do it shows that although it causes them to lose money, they think that the moral benefits of
The Censorship Was Damaging ... (Score:3, Funny)
Damn! (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up! (Score:2)
They have nothing to admit or apologize for (Score:5, Insightful)
Millions of Chinese Internet users have better access to information now than they would have if Google had decided to take "the principled position" and refuse to play ball. What seems to fly over the heads of people who advocate that position is that the result would not have been the Chinese government caving in and saying, "Okay, you're right, we shouldn't force you to censor." The result would have been "Okay, then you don't get to do business in our country," and, as much as that might make Westerners feel all warm and fuzzy inside (Hooray! We have held fast in the face of evil!) it would not be a good thing for the millions of people in China who are now able to use Google every day.
Further, not only would Google have been shut out of China, but a homegrown alternative would undoubtedly have taken its place -- and you can bet that the alternative would not have taken the pains Google has to point out to its Chinese users that their search results are in fact censored. That fact is spelled out in no uncertain terms on google.cn's search results pages: they say "" which means more or less "In order to comply with local regulations, some search results have been removed."
Google is helping millions of people more efficiently access information, and it is pointing out the existence of government interference with said information to people who might otherwise be unaware of it.
Taking their ball and going home would improve on that situation how, exactly?
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So when someone admits the real world is a place you have to sometimes make a comprimise (e.g. a censored Google is better than no Google for China), a lot of p
Parent is not flamebait (Score:2)
Absolute ideologies ARE harmful in that they care very little about the different real-life situations one could be in. They tend to give people a dangerously simple (or naive sometimes) set of glasses, through which everything in the world becomes either black or white.
For example, it is well known that in physics, a physicist tends to put his tested theory in the simplest form, and a lot of us would agree, simple is beautiful. But in engineering, when an engineer attempts
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Well, you said it yourself:
The result would have been "Okay, then you don't get to do business in our country,"
Google does not want to "help", google wants to do business. I wonder where you get the notion that the Chinese people "might (otherwise) be unaware of" government censorship and repression - they live there, every day. Helping someone or some country to suppress and censor information is just what it is, no matter
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From dating a Chinese woman for a year and a half, and remaining friends with her now that she's living in Shanghai. From spending time in China myself. From observing countless discussions on the net where ordinary Chinese people say with a straight face that if the government is filtering anything, it's only immoral stuff they'd be better off not seeing. I'm not just pulling tha
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But that's the funny thing about censorship. Of course the Chinese people know that they're being censored, but how are they supposed to know what is being censored?
Scared of us, but not scared enough to stop! (Score:2)
Have you noticed this trend of corporate hand-wringing? They do something morally questionable in the interests of making more cash, then later say, "Gee... we feel bad about doing that..." But keep doing the same thing. It lends credence to theory that the "NGO Code of Conduct" recently reported on slashd
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Whose attention? Western observers? They already know China censors the net, and they've already objected to it, and China has already ignored their objections. The Chinese? Not really -- the whole point of government censorship is that the government controls what people get to find out. Chinese net users would not read the "Google valiantly refused to bow down to censorship, and China b
This is a positive for Google (Score:4, Interesting)
But it was amusing to see the rationalizations from the Google employees and apologists for effectively collaborating with the Chinese government. Justify it as you will, Google was collaborating with the Chinese government, working hand in hand, to censor information.
For a look at the absurdity, see:
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananmen+
Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square is one of the largest city squares in the world. It is located on the central axis of old
When they take google.cn down then this will mean something more - right now we just have words, actions don't reflect what Brin is saying.
Re:This is a positive for Google (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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Serveert makes a good point (Score:3, Insightful)
But it's only covered up when everyone that controls the flow of information agrees to silence discussion.
I wonder if any 'Stealth Marketers' are present here?
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Think St. Peter's Square or the Champs d'Elysee or Tr
It's not Googles fault (Score:5, Insightful)
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China is not unique (Score:5, Insightful)
Google censors results from Americans at the request of the American government. We don't talk about it because the vast majority of people in the country despise the distasteful type of search results they filter. But nevertheless, if you truly believe in free speech, it is hypocritical to suggest that limiting one type of speech is ok while limiting another is not.
See this [chillingeffects.org], this [chillingeffects.org], or for more general information, chillingeffects.org [chillingeffects.org].
Yes, there are terms you can use on google that will produce an error message ("some results have been censored due to legal request; for more information see chillingeffects.org.") Get creative, and you'll see it.
I'm not blaming google; they must follow the law of the land. Nevertheless, there you have it.
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None of the articles you link offer any evidence of this being done systematically. Do you have particular search terms or articles talking about specific searches that result in this message that doesn't stem from a temporary injunction or something under appeal?
Dupe...Read this today taking a Dump at Google (Score:2, Interesting)
It's never too late to do the right thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it." --Orlando A. Battista
Typo (Score:3, Insightful)
Google Admits China Censorship Publicity Was Damaging
All fixed.
The censorshop is working! (Score:5, Insightful)
Paragraph 1. It's not just Tiananmen, but every other dirty thing the Chinese Government is doing they've helped suppress. Who are they holding this information from? Not you or I, but from the Chinese Public. They're helping the Chinese Government spread lies.
Paragraph 2. It's worked! Today Young Chinese don't believe Tiananmen ever happened. Mission Accomplished, Google! They are having a related problem in Cambodia where young people don't believe the Killings Fields ever happened.
"In January 2006, Google agreed to censor their mainland China site, Google.cn, to remove information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre [3], as well as other topics such as Tibetan independence, the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong and the political status of Taiwan. When people search for those censored topics, it will list the following at the bottom of the page in Chinese, "According to the local laws, regulations and policies, part of the searching result is not shown." The uncensored Wikipedia articles on the 1989 protests, both in English and Chinese Wikipedia, have been attributed as a cause of the blocking of Wikipedia by the government in mainland China.
In 2006, the American PBS program "Frontline" broadcast a segment filmed at Peking University, many of whose students participated in the 1989 protests. Four students were shown a picture of the Tank man, but none of them correctly identified the person or the event depicted. Some responded that it was a military parade, or an artwork. This is reflective of either strong censorship of the event in mainland China, or the effectiveness of political indoctrination such that students feigned ignorance to an American journalist."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_pro
I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
That aside, I think their decision to go into China was definitely good for society/the world as a whole. Besides the obvious benefits of Chinese people having more information (albeit biased) available, I think it was good to draw more attention to (a) their censorship program, (b) the censored material, and (c) the evilness of the Chinese government.
(a) The rest of the world can see that it exists, and to what extent. It's easier to find out what material is being censored.
(b) There are obviously loopholes. I don't know of any in particular, but I'm sure a large amount of information slips through. There's no way you can get a bullet-proof censor of the whole internet. Also, the rest of the world can see actual content that was censored (what really happened/why was it censored anyway?)
(c) This should be self-explanatory. At least it increases awareness of what they're doing. I had a friend that did a semester abroad in China (Univ of Beijing). He said it was bad there. Really bad. Apparently "George Washington" is an unacceptable name there. The problem was, he wanted to go to (God forbid) George Washington University for grad school. The problem was, he couldn't access anything from there online, he said his mail was checked. It was such a pain that he ended up giving up applying there because the name of the university was so hard to get through their shit political system. I think the censorship program just makes situations like this come under more fire. And rightfully so. Go Google!
[1] Maybe that's the problem. People will believe any mumbo jumbo [youtube.com] you throw at them. My parents are no exception. "Oh Google is censoring/ They shouldn't do that". That's not even half of the story. People are idiots. If this actually did/will hurt Google, that will be the only reason.
What they say and what they do (Score:4, Interesting)
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