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Google Confirms Chinese Censorship Claims 515

Posted by michael from the great-wall dept.
UnanimousCoward writes "A spokesperson has responded to the 'censorship' questions in this article: '"Google has decided that in order to create the best possible search experience for our mainland China users we will not include sites whose content is not accessible," company spokeswoman Debbie Frost said Friday.'" Our original article ran on Wednesday.
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Google Confirms Chinese Censorship Claims More

Google Confirms Chinese Censorship Claims

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  • That's fair enough (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jbartone ( 612450 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:23AM (#10354520)
    No use listing them if the users can't get there (that's if they're not using one of the proxy's)

    • Re:That's fair enough (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wertarbyte ( 811674 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:24AM (#10354529) Homepage
      They could get there. Google cache. But I guess Google will be on the Verboten!-list then.

    • Re:That's fair enough (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:26AM (#10354538)
      Yup only terrorists would want to know what the government is hiding from them.

      Have a nice day-cycle, citizen.

    • Not necessarily (Score:5, Interesting)

      by christor ( 663626 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:30AM (#10354561)
      There is a use to listing censored sites - so that people in China can know what's being withheld from them. (In the dubious words of Rumsfeld - listing censored sites makes them known unknowns rather than unknown unknowns....) A precursor to any sort of political change that enhances liberty is knowing that your freedom is being curtailed - and to what degree. I would say that Google is, in a limited way, enhancing China's ability to present a false picture of the world to its people.

      • Re:Not necessarily (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Beautyon ( 214567 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:49AM (#10354641) Homepage
        Do you think that the Chinese are so stupid that they need Google (or you for that matter) to tell them that they are not "free"?

        And as for this "false picture" being presented to the Chiese by their government, your time would be much better spent correcting those people that think, for example, that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 911.

        I'll leave it to you to compare who is free and who is not, who is getting uncensored news and who is not.

        Or is that a bad idea?!

        • Re:Not necessarily (Score:5, Insightful)

          by nkh ( 750837 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:06AM (#10354724) Journal
          I don't want to insult anyone, but I spoke with chinese students who came in my college to study CS and they had strange answers when I asked about the chinese gov., libery, privacy... They seemed more interested in what capitalism in communist China could bring them (like cell phones and junk food) than censorship.

          What? but there's no censorship in China? I almosted laughed when I heard that one. Maybe they were just young, but it was disturbing.

          • Re:Not necessarily (Score:3, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward
            What? but there's no censorship in China? I almosted laughed when I heard that one. Maybe they were just young, but it was disturbing.
            It's so nice that there's no censorship in US.

            • Re:Not necessarily (Score:4, Interesting)

              by The Snowman ( 116231 ) * on Sunday September 26, 2004 @01:09PM (#10355441)

              It's so nice that there's no censorship in US.

              I know this is a sarcastic comment, but in some ways there is no censorship. This article talks specifically about Internet censorship. When was the last time the FCC shut down a web site with "objectionable" material that could not be e.g. broadcast on television? If I type the word "fuck" on the Internet where children could read it, the FCC is powerless to stop me, while if I tried saying it on TV it would be edited or beeped out. Witness the web sites with that horrible atrocity, the nipple shot from the SuperBowl. I say horrible not because it was televised, but because it was so damn ugly.

              Anyway, government censorship is very bad, and the U.S. does have it, but it could be worse. Thankfully, with the Internet, I have access to information I never dreamt existed a decade ago. Even when I was on AOL back then, it was AOL censorship, not the government. Either way I was restricted.

              • Re:Not necessarily (Score:3, Insightful)

                by 4of12 ( 97621 )

                but in some ways there is no censorship.

                Maybe not in the old-fashioned sense of government censors using black tape and scissors on newspapers and magazines.

                We're much more sophisticated now. The government doesn't need to use such heavy-handed tactics, not least because government does not necessarily represent the most powerful institutions anymore.

                Instead, we have just a few very powerful information 3 and 4 letter sources and wire services with access to most of the audience. Other viewpoints don't

          • No Joke (Score:5, Interesting)

            by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @12:01PM (#10355042)
            I knew of a student from mainland China who lived at the prime of communism in the 80s. Today he's a U.S citizen. If there is one thing for sure... he can't believe the difference in American TV and internet news.

            On TV we censor so damn much, but everything's fair game on the internet. And that's great. Google is now playing axis of evil. The last place a student from China could find real content is now being censored.

            • Re:No Joke (Score:4, Insightful)

              by ArbitraryConstant ( 763964 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @01:12PM (#10355453) Homepage
              I think it's pretty simple. If Google links to sites that Chinese can't get to, all they'll get is whatever the Great Firewall gives them when it blocks something. If they provide cached content, or quotes from blocked sites, they'll end up blocked themselves.

              They're too big a site to escape scrutiny. They can benefit from the situation themselves (advertising revenue for a billion people), but they can't improve the situation for the Chinese.

              It's ethically ambiguous, but the cause is the government's policy on censorship. They're not going to change that if they have to block Google and use search.msn.com instead.

          • Re:Not necessarily (Score:5, Insightful)

            by tonywong ( 96839 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @12:19PM (#10355149) Homepage
            It's been that way for decades. You conform or you die or go away for a long time. After a while you and your kids start to believe that the crap they do is normal.

            That's why so many Chinese left China. My parents didn't leave because they didn't have a free google, they left because my dad's father was shot. For being a principal (of a school) during the counter-revolution. My mom's brother got sentenced to eight years of hard labour for wearing flashy shirts and liking the fast life (too Western).

          • Likewise (Score:3, Interesting)

            by sbszine ( 633428 )
            A student I did some group work with (a lovely, gentle guy) told me that the Tiananmen square massacre was an urban myth, and that there was no censorship in China, just a consensus not to view immoral information. And he was a smart guy too, happily wading through the most byzantine of OO designs.
        • .... that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 911.

          Dude! I so dialed 911 yesterday, and the operator was all, like, "Dude, this is Saddam! How can I rescue you today!" Like, dude, Saddam was 911, dude!

        • Re:Not necessarily (Score:5, Insightful)

          by wheelbarrow ( 811145 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @12:01PM (#10355048)
          Ok, Beautyon, let's compare. I'll make a statement that I think is true about the Communist Chinese government.

          The Communist Chinese government's rein of power is illegitimate. It is illegitimate because it's power is not derived from free and democratic elections conducted in an uncensored arena of freedom of expression.

          That statement alone, made on a website like Slashdot in China, could land me in jail. Perhaps, I would even just disappear and be executed without due process.

          Now, I could make the same statement about the presidency of George W Bush. I could say that his rein is illegitimate because the electoral college is a sham and Al Gore won the absolute majority of the votes. I can say that now, on Slashdot, whilst I casually sip my Sunday morning coffee and nothing will happen to me.

          Comparing the USA vs. China in this arena of the freedom of expression is ridiculous.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:52AM (#10354663)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re:I agree. However... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by mefus ( 34481 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:23AM (#10354828) Journal
          The question then becomes, "if Google created these 'known unknowns,' how long would it be before Google itself gets blocked?"

          Why does that have to be the question? Why can't it be "Is it necessary to put aside our principles of Freedom of Information to get access to the Chinese Market?"

          A person would have the moral censure of his community to risk if he were to do this. But a corporation evades it because it has a mandate against moral choices.

          Because a corporation will not make the same choices as a person, and because a corporation isn't subject to moral censure in the same way an individual is, the community should have special controls over what the corporation is allowed. This should include restricting its activities in anti-democratic political domains.

          This reveals Google's "be good" mantra as nothing more than marketing nonsense.

          • Re:I agree. However... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by schmaltz ( 70977 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @01:01PM (#10355398)
            Hogwash. A game with one round is easily lost. A game with many rounds has much more opportunity to be won.

            That's the game Google is playing. Your game, the one which goes as follows, has but one conclusion:
            1. Google opens for business in PRC, providing cache access to documents blocked by the government's filteres
            2. PRC blocks Google
            3. Game over. The people of China lose.
            By going in soft, Google can build public mindshare by providing a powerful search tool that will help the public see into the gray areas of PRC's censorship, and begin exploiting them.

            With your approach, Google's principles would become instantly worthless to the people in China. With Google's approach, they will have the opportunity to attack the problem of censorship from within, rather than from outside.

            • Re:I agree. However... (Score:3, Insightful)

              by mefus ( 34481 )
              That's the game Google is playing.

              That's probably why Google did what it did: because google is gaming the system rather than adhering to the "do no evil" mantra. They are choosing the evil greater of two evils (while ignoring the other choices they have which have less immediate economic gain). But this is the conclusion of the argument (Is google not "doing no evil" by censoring search results to the PRC subjects) that you are arguing to justify your conclusion. Merely by being available (whether ce

        • Re:I agree. However... (Score:4, Informative)

          by cyfer2000 ( 548592 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @12:14PM (#10355120) Journal
          Google was blocked by China for certain time last year.
      • Other then google itself being baned?

    • No it is not fair!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by sopuli ( 459663 )
      This way people will not even know there are sites that their government sensors. Google is only afraid that they themselves will be sensored away and they'll loose the huge Chinese market. I am very disappointed in Google as this shows that their "Be not evil" only is a silly marketing line and will be cast aside if there is money to be made.

    • Thank you Ministry of Information (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fleener ( 140714 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:41AM (#10354601)
      Yes, thank you Google for supporting censorship. Our world is better off when people do not know what information they do not have access to. A dumb populace is a controlled populace. We need more Googles and fewer Harry Tuttles.

      Uh huh.

    • Keep it there anyway accessible via Google cache.
    • It's valid. I live in China, and it can get pretty frustrating when a google search results in lots of links to geocities pages, and other sites on blocked servers. I really have no problem with Google just making those results vanish, since I can't see them, anyway, and they sometimes just result in opened tabs that never load when I forget to check the host domain. It'd be nice if there were an option, however. A little check-box or link to "See results including blocked sites". tek.

  • And what about the cache? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by orulz ( 98036 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:23AM (#10354524)
    Were people in China able use the google cache to circumvent the governmental censorship? If that's the case, it seems that leaving the service active would provide a "better experience" to me.

  • Would it be better if China took Google offline? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by turnstyle ( 588788 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:24AM (#10354526) Homepage
    If Google indexed banned sites, then they would still be available via Google's cache.

    Would it be better if China took Google offline entirely?

    • Re:Would it be better if China took Google offline (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gaijin99 ( 143693 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:49AM (#10354643) Journal
      If I owned Google I would rather see my search engine banned in China, than participate (however marginally) in keeping its citizens down. There is a clear line here: the censoring pseudo-facists in the Chinese government are on one side, and I am on the other. Google has chosen to side with the Chinese government. That's their choice, but I will not pretend to respect that choice, or offer any defense of that choice.

      As citizens of a free country we should be offering an uplifted middle finger to the thugs who run China [1], and I cannot feel good about any company rooted here supporting them.

      .

      [1] And Saudi Arabia, and Iran, and Pakistan, and the list goes on. But the response should always be the same, contempt and derision for the thugs, and support for those citizens who are attempting to overthrow the thugs who run those countries.

      • "Google has chosen to side with the Chinese government. That's their choice, but I will not pretend to respect that choice, or offer any defense of that choice"

        Google has chosen on the side of the stock holders. They have chosen to enter a closed market under the markets terms. Business decisions.
        • I do not accept the argument that the profit motive excuses all other behavior. Furthermore, Google Inc. claimed to reject that argument when they claimed that they would not be evil. In retrospect, it is obvious that the "don't be evil" line was nothing more than marketing. I had hoped otherwise, and I will admit to a definate bitterness at discovering that it was, in fact, total BS.

      • Hey I understand your sentiments. But if Google took the moral high ground and refused to do business with any country that violates human rights then they need to close up shop. Every country in the whole freeking world violates somebody's rights. Slashdot picks on China but I'm sure much of Google is banned in Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, etc. Certain search subjects are banned in Germany. The list goes on an on.

        At least in China the rules are well set down. Here in the USA the government ca
    • "Would it be better if China took Google offline entirely?"
      yes.
      The people of China would really understand what their government is doing (wrt preventing them from getting certain information). If you think this is already the case, talk to Chinese who went back to China this summer. They say "Things are getting better. (But the air and water are still bad.)" They do not see (or do not admit) that the government is a serious problem (wrt human rights).

    • Re:Would it be better if China took Google offline (Score:5, Informative)

      by k98sven ( 324383 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:55AM (#10354676) Journal
      If Google indexed banned sites, then they would still be available via Google's cache.

      Nope. China already blocks [searchenginewatch.com] Google's cache, as well as most proxies they can find.

      Would it be better if China took Google offline entirely?

      Not from their point of view. It's a too obvious a form of censorship. They want to maintain the illusion of freedom as much as possible. That's why they don't want Google listing these banned pages to begin with; it makes the censorship more obvious.

  • Just remember that (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lifix ( 791281 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:24AM (#10354532) Homepage
    Google, as much as we love it, is a priviate company, and they have to abide by the laws, regulations and codes of conduct in forign countries, whose markets they wish to enter.

    Don't get upset with goodle over cencorship, get upset with the government who's laws they must abide.

    • doesn't your answer pretty much (Score:5, Insightful)

      by taxman_10m ( 41083 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:36AM (#10354579)
      vindicate companies that did business with the 3rd Reich too?

      I find something to be very flawed with the reasoning that it is moral to enter into an market in which you know your company's actions are furthuring the immoral policies of the government. Trying to absolve one's self of blame just because you are "trying to make a profit" which is "what comapnies do" doesn't seem to be a very wholesome answer.
      • It's easy to throw that little bone out now isn't it? How about in the 30s when concentration camps weren't known, and people that ran those businesses didn't have a clue as to what their product might have been used for until it was too late?

        Hindsight is 20/20, and it's easy to spout off on a forum on 'how things need to be done'

        China is a sovreign nation and just because we don't agree with how they plan on running their country doesn't mean we can't find a way to do business within their constraints.
        • How about in the 30s when concentration camps weren't known, and people that ran those businesses didn't have a clue as to what their product might have been used for until it was too late?

          The difference being that this is not the thirties, and we have sufficent knowledge of what china is doing and has recently done to nullify your "but how can they know" argument.

          By supporting china, and doing business in china, you support censorship and gross human rights violations.
      • True, but even a censored google increases the amount of information available to the Chinese citizens. With time, and as search engines and western media become more prevalent in the contemporary Chinese culture, it will become impossible to censor everything and the Chinese govt will simply have to open up, just like they are doing with capitalism.

        You seem to think that the moral choice in this case would be to abandon the Chinese population completely and leave them to their government-imposed darkness.
    • Google, as much as we love it, is a priviate company

      Umm... Didn't they IPO just a little while ago?
    • Google, as much as we love it, is a priviate company, and they have to abide by the laws, regulations and codes of conduct in forign countries, whose markets they wish to enter.

      That does not in any way change that fact that Google is run by humans, who should behave as if they have at least SOME respect for their fellow man.
      If corporations get the same rights as people, they also get the same social obligation to not turn this planet into a total shithole.

      Don't get upset with goodle over cencorship,
      • They *could* refuse to do business with these goons, but they'd rather fuck over their fellow man so they can make a few more bucks.

        If they refused to abide by the law of the Chinese government, China would simply block google (as they have in the past). Then no one (not using a proxy) in China would have access to google at all. They are helping their "fellow man" more by allowing people in China limited access to google, so that they can at least access non-political information and things that the go
    • Google, as much as we love it, is a priviate company,

      Uh, no, Google is a publicly traded company. Which means they're now very much influenced by public perception. Investors are exactly the kind of people who would drive this decision, to varying degrees of directness.

      Don't get upset with goodle over cencorship, get upset with the government who's laws they must abide.

      Google doesn't have to abide to any Chinese law. They did it purely because they knew that if they didn't, the Chinese government

  • a point is.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:25AM (#10354533) Homepage Journal
    that it wouldn't exactly be "good service" if google provided them with links to news(among approved news) that would get the clients ass in jail(if he read the link).

  • Why not... (Score:4, Funny)

    by JimmyJava ( 774754 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:25AM (#10354535)
    let the Chinese people see what their government is hiding from them? Probably because the government would then ban google. Silly communists, oppression of ideas is for fascist regimes!

  • Censorship? Not really. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the pickle ( 261584 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:26AM (#10354536) Homepage
    So in other words, it isn't exactly censorship. It's "you're-not-going-to-be-able-to-view-this-site-any way, so-we're-going-to-save-you-the-trouble-and-not-lis t-it"-ship.

    There's nothing I hate more than doing a search for something and getting a bunch of (useful-looking) results that then turn out to be 404 or inaccessible for some other reason. It gives my mind a case of intellectual blue balls.

    Breaking out the "C" word on Google here doesn't seem exactly fair. Fix the broken communist Chinese dictatorship and Google won't be forced into silly positions like this.

    p

    • easier answer (Score:5, Funny)

      by gimpboy ( 34912 ) <john,m,harrold&gmail,com> on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:43AM (#10354609) Homepage
      place a checkbox in the advanced search options:

      [ ] display search results your government wont allow you to view.

    • Google has made China's censorship easier because Chinese Google users are now less aware of their oppression. Can you be oppressed and not be award of it? In terms of information, yes. The bottom line is that Google is no longer a window on the world. It is the window on what the Chinese government wants its citizens to see. In my book, that's flaming red evil. If they'll bend to assist censors, they can stoop to anything.

    • Re:Censorship? Not really. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gaijin99 ( 143693 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:56AM (#10354680) Journal
      Google has a very simple way out of such silly decisions: tell the Chinese government to go fuck themselves. It is the response any freedom loving individual can, and should, use when confronted with repressive governments.

      The people of China deserve better than the government that is thrust upon them, and every company that does business in China is (indirectly) supporting the evil government of China. This is not a difficult choice: do you support freedom, or do you support tyrany? Google has made their choice, and they have chosen to support the Chinese government. I will not argue Google's freedom to support the Chinese government, but I disagree completely with that decision.

  • If Google were to display results from sites the Chinese government blocks, computer users would end up clicking on links that lead nowhere -- something the search engine has always tried to avoid.

    ok, so couldn't google offer an option to NOT block out these sites? maybe the Chinese would use some sort of caching system to view this sites instead (coral?, google?), or maybe they just want to see what IS available

  • We should crucify Google! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:26AM (#10354540)
    No, not really. However, how responsible should Google be in fighting oppression in other countries?

    "Do no evil", but does that mean to fight against evil whenever possible? I don't think Google has any right, let alone responsibility, to make a stand against the Chinese government. If the socialists in that country see fit to regulate the media to the extent that massive nation-wide filters need to be erected to keep "bad" things out, then Google (an American company) has no business telling them they are wrong.

    The internet is international and some nations prefer to keep some of the worst areas out of the hands of their publics. Is that such a wrong thing? Isn't it more wrong to hand over porn to the kiddies via a web search than it is to filter it out?

    Dancin Santa
    • Their stand is to aid the Chinese government. No one is saying that they should instead strap on a cape and slip into some tights, fighting evil whereever they go. They should simply not do business with China.

  • In Chineese version only? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by taylortbb ( 759869 ) <taylor@byrnes.gmail@com> on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:30AM (#10354558) Homepage
    This article makes me wonder, do they not index any banned sites period or are they just not listed in the Chinese version?

    If they don't index banned sites period hI think the best way would be to not list them in the chinese version, and in the general version, list them but not cache them. That way there are no broken links for chinese users, they abide by the laws (from my understanding), and we can still see those websites.

  • Censorship always evil! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jarich ( 733129 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:30AM (#10354562) Homepage Journal
    Noooo... anytime anyone "censors" anything, it ~must~ be evil...

    But we love Google... Google always good...

    Feeling like a James T. Kirk versus Robot logic issue.. head will blow up soon! Cannot resolve conflicting Slashdot logic!

    KHaaaaaaaaaaannnn (just for effect)

  • What is worse than censorship... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hanssprudel ( 323035 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:32AM (#10354569)
    ... is silent censorship. And that is the kind of censorship that I find the most frightening about the digital age.

    When you censor a physical document, it has to go somewhere. You have to take it, you have to steal it, you have to burn it, etc. On the web, a page that is gone is just gone, quietly and painlessly, with only perhaps a few broken links to show that it was ever there. Google may think those broken links are just an annoyance, but in truth they are all that seperates the futile censorship that regimes have practiced since civilization began from 1984.

    If the Chinese government wants to censor sites, then we cannot stop them. Since they claim that they are doing it for the good of their own people, then they can have that discussion with those people, and we should not be accomplices to sweeping it under the rug.

    The sad thing is that Google already have a precedent here: the way they mark search results that have been censored due to the DMCA (cf this [google.com]). If they truly believed in "not being evil" they would do the same thing with Chinese news: place a disclaimer that some results have been removed because the news sources are available in China. Leave it to CG to explain why.

  • It makes a kind of sense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Morosoph ( 693565 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:32AM (#10354571) Homepage Journal
    If the user can find a proxy, they'll be getting the full Google from there. If they can't access a site anyway, it's not a valid search result.

    I know that there's more to this issue than algorithmic accuracy, and it's easy to say that Google shouldn't be doing China's work for them, but given that Google's a good search engine, and its availabilty is accordingly boon to free speech, even if its coverage isn't comprehensive, it's better than it not being available at all. It's notable that they've not promised to create any new censorship, only to "respect" existing censorship.

  • Beginning of the end (Score:3, Insightful)

    by digitect ( 217483 ) <digitect&dancingpaper,com> on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:34AM (#10354573)

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the beginning of the end of Google's dominance. They've just opened the door for the competition because we can now question the integrity of the main function it serves.

    The whole reason most of us began using Google ages ago was because we knew that what was entered into that lone input box on the front page would return results as accurate as could scientifically be obtained. If the search didn't result in the match you wanted, you knew it wasn't Google's fault but your own.

    But now they've admitted to editing the returns. How do we know this is the only case? Perhaps another search engine would return something more accurate?

    • because of the companies integrity. The same is true of everything. You think that people buy Nike because of their kosher business practices? No, they buy Nike because it's a shoe they think is better than the rest.
    • You're wrong. ;)

      This isn't the beginning of the end of Google's dominance any more than the limited reverse-engineering of PageRank was the beginning of the end. Google-bombing [wikipedia.org] has been going on for at least a few years now, and if anything, Google has become more popular with the unwashed masses.

      What will be the eventual downfall of Google is the perception of the public that the search results are no longer the best that "science" -- and I use the term very loosely -- can provide. Until it is widely per
    • That is utter rubbish.

      All Google has to do is guarantee that in the USA UK etc their results are not censored in any way.

      Wether you take their word for it or not is another matter, but it is perfectly possible for them to run different services for each territory.

      The one that you and I think is best is the "pure" uncensored index, and we use that one. The other people with different standards use the other ones.

      Google remains on top, we get what we need, they get what they want, and we all live peaceful

  • Amusing (Score:4, Funny)

    by rainer_d ( 115765 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:34AM (#10354574) Homepage
    What I found particulary amusing about this article are the "related links" on the right, pointing to "Best deals: Censorship" on pricegrabber.

    That's probably an accurate description of the situation....

    Rainer
  • Seems like everytime I find what looks like a link that might answer some obscure question I have, the link is changed or gone ... and not everything is cached.

    Mailing list digests seem to be the biggest offenders, and of course dynamic systems like forums.

  • big deal (Score:5, Informative)

    by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:35AM (#10354576) Homepage
    So...news.google.com, not the main engine, is being talked about here. And the articles not being shown are the ones that wouldn't show up anyway. And this is only for Chinese-language search. Yeah, Voice of America (voanews.com) is definitely blocked, BBC News too. I'm in China...other than a few news sites it's rare I get blocked, and when I do, I just use a regular squid proxy to get by.

    Doing no evil doesn't necessarily mean Google has to be the progressive cause for change," Li said. "(In China), they are saying, 'This is the law of the land, and there is nothing we can do to change it.'"

  • Not only China (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ecc0 ( 548386 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:45AM (#10354623)
    Google does not only do this in China. In Germany, national socialism is largely forbidden, so the well-known NS/WP site stormfront.org is blocked. Try this link [google.de] from German google, and notice how it claims to find no matches on stormfront.org. The same search on American google.com [google.com] returns 53,500 matches.

  • /. hypocrisy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:45AM (#10354624)
    I remember a few years back when China was in process of building "The Great Fire Wall" and how Cisco was providing a significant portion of the equpiment.

    Slashdot erupted with much weeping and gnashing of teeth of the evils of Cisco and how they sold out to the devil and censorship yadda yadda.

    Now ./'s favorite poster child company does the same thing, and its "well they have to obey the laws!" Pick one. Either you're against censorship, or you're for Capitialism and following the laws of the land. Don't apply the rules differently to different companies.

  • “Don’t be evil” ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Grumpy Troll ( 790026 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:52AM (#10354659)

    ... says Google's motto. But what exactly does the company mean by that? To quote Sergey Page in an interview [google-watch.org] he and Larry Brin did for Playboy.

    As for "Don't be evil," we have tried to define precisely what it means to be a force for good--always do the right, ethical thing. Ultimately, "Don't be evil" seems the easiest way to summarize it.
    So what exactly is the right, ethical thing to do in the situation Google is having to face when it comes to providing search services in China? Abide by Chinese censorship laws in the name of business, or not deploy a local version of their search engine in that country rather than having to provide access to a search engine with censored results?

    After all, is this the right, ethical thing to do as far as Google is concerned? ... If it truly is, then I believe we ought to be somewhat more cautious about the company than we actually are and stop considering it as one which can only do good to the extent of sacrificing business opportunities in the name of ethics. Otherwise, perhaps we should just content ourselves of reconsidering the said motto.

    • The more you have, the better. And it is better to have some than none.

      The problem here is not google, it is china's government policy. Google has no say in what the government there does. Imagine if google were a food distributor and the chinese government limited people to 2 cups of rice per day - if google offered more, they would not be allowed access to the country. People would have no cups of rice per day.

      There is nothing google could possibly do, except perhaps do no business with china. I do

  • Futile (Score:2)

    by MouseR ( 3264 )
    There are plenty ways and even underground web sites that offer proxy and redirection services to circumvents precisely this kind of thing.

    You can even find some with Google. Those who want to know will eventually know.
  • Just remember that corporations have no souls. They are simply driven by profit. Google is just doing what 90% of the countries in the world do.

    If anything, the only influence one can have is with the shareholders...

  • thats how it is (Score:2, Insightful)

    by racerxroot ( 786164 )
    i think its fine... just because WE think China's rules are harsh and wrong (because we've been fortunate enough to have so many freedoms), that doesn't mean that we should expect everyone else in the world to have them... I commend Google for obeying the laws of the country it works in... heck, the Chinese government could just say "No Google for you!" and then they'd lose 2 billion (?) customers. Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing we just can't dabble with.
    • just because WE think China's rules are harsh and wrong (because we've been fortunate enough to have so many freedoms), that doesn't mean that we should expect everyone else in the world to have them

      That's why they try to censor the internet - China doesn't want its citizens to know better, and do something about it.
  • China is a large part of the worlds population, but there are still billions of other poeple that can access Google. Google has a great opportunity to lead by example and take the moral high bround by telling China it is their problem to restrict sites. Giving in like this is sort of like giving in to terrorists demands. It leads to more demands.

  • cowardice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by photomic ( 666457 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:03AM (#10354714)
    I bet Google did this to avoid being blocked themselves. The obvious, non-cowardly solution, would be to present the "blocked" links in a way that identifies them as blocked. This would be doubly informative, for it would show the Chinese user what he or she could access once their oppressive, human-rights violating government is replaced (or, once they are able to emigrate); and, it would quantify the results more appropriately. How long before Google filters U.S. results for politically-appropriate content?

    • Re:cowardice (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dan Farina ( 711066 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @01:35PM (#10355600)
      I agree with what you are saying; Google is presented with a binary choice: they can be blocked, or they can cede to the Chinese censor's demands. In one case, all Chinese would lose access to Google to find information they are allowed to access. In the other case, they wouldn't be able to see all results.

      People are saying this move is "evil," but wouldn't ensuring deprivation of the Chinese citizens of all the content searchable by Google be counter-productive?

      Plus this solution will net some more cash for Google, too. I feel that in this situation both choices are morally on parity, but their monetary gains are not on parity. At that point, the choice becomes obvious for a business.

  • The real issue is full disclosure by Google (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Everyman ( 197621 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @12:40PM (#10355300) Homepage
    I think we're barking up the wrong issue. As Google Watch [google-watch.org] says, "We have no position on Google and China. Since the Patriot Act, we also don't know what to think about Google's dealings with the U.S. government. If we ever get full disclosure from Google, we will form an opinion. That's the prior problem and the fundamental issue. No one can believe what Google says about anything important. It's none of our business!"

  • Query (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Idarubicin ( 579475 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @01:40PM (#10355633) Journal
    How many Slashdotters are posting indignant messages about Google's "evil" ways from a computer containing no components manufactured in China? Anybody have a home that contains no China-sourced products? By buying products assembled in China, aren't we directly propping up the dictatorial regime there?

    China represents what, a sixth of the world's people? It's tough to avoid doing business with them in some way. Google's "Don't be evil" mantra is commendable, but what does it mean? If most Americans are willing to tacitly accept doing business with the Chinese regime and still consider ourselves to be "good" people, is it appropriate to hold Google to a higher standard than we hold ourselves?

    Another question, for the scientists and engineers in the crowd--how many of you use Google to answer work-related questions on at least a weekly basis? Daily? More than once per day?

    Google is profoundly useful for things besides fomenting political unrest. I dare say that cutting off China's access to Google would constitute a small but significant blow to them economically and scientifically. Is it "evil" to help researchers and engineers do their work, just because those individuals are located in a repressive country? Is it "evil" to not help them?

    How many people have looked up medical information through Google?

    Is it "evil" to cut off that source of health information to a billion Chinese people because we don't like their government?

    Food for thought.

  • Insider Hearsay and why it matters... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mantera ( 685223 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @02:24PM (#10355890)

    According to my insider hearsay, (note, it's hearsay, thus it's not admittable in court as evidence and by declaring it as such I can't be sued for libel, but I personally fully believe it to be true in my opinion, and again, i can't be sued for opinion), this started when Google was blocked by the chinese for having provided access through their search results to material the chinese government didn't like (dissenting views, and pro-democracy and human rights pages critical of the chinese government). Sergey (Brin), who is responsible for policy (Larry page oversees the technical side and Schmidt oversees the admins of doing business), wasn't quite sure how to respond, and was put by an insider 'grown-up' in contact with industry's 'grown-ups' to ask them, and as such he was talking to Esther Dyson who suggested to him, and effectively persuaded him with the following view; that internet use in china is, by large, a luxury that is afforded by those who are doing well within the system and thus don't have much to complain about, and that, essentially, internet users in china are people who prefer the status quo, and those who are deprived by the injustice of the chinese system either can't afford the luxury of being online or just don't need google to point out to them how bad things are. Basically, she advised him to cooperate with the chinese.

    I should note that Esther Dyson is an investor in Google, albeit indirectly, through two venture funds and she won't say how much she's invested because she insists that she doesn't know the figures and deliberately avoids finding out.

    Sergey was persuaded by this course or action and rationale, and google made contact with the chinese offering cooperation with them. Initially, google took the official line of refusing to elaborate on the extent of that cooperation, by insisting that they didn't make changes to their index but that they only advised the chinese on how to effectively block content from their users.

    Now why does this matter?

    I see many people who are defending Google saying it's a business and has no moral duty beyond acting within the business-regulating laws, and I can only suspect that else would've been said had it been something about Microsoft, or even Sun Microsystems (which is fashionable to hate these days by open source wanna-belong retards even though it's the second biggest code contributor ever to open source after UC Berkley). Well, morality matters to Google because they chose that it matters when they declared to the world that they're a company which motto is "Do No Evil". I personally am aware of people who find investing in Google attractive for charitable or philanthropic motives thanks to this feel-good motto, in a similar way to how they would want to invest in organic farming, green energy and the rest. Likewise, many people use it loyally with the same feel-good trust.

    I have been somewhat busy so I'm not fully up to date with my insiders on recent developments, but now it seems that Google is blocking access to chinese sites not only for those they deem status-quo chinese internet users, but also globally, including people like me. If this is true then I do *not* feel good about this. It doesn't not agree with my morality, and morality matters because Google chose that it does.

    As such, their motto should be fully declared as, and can only honestly be, "Do No Evil, with evil being defined and interpreted by our notable investors". Because after all, Evil is in the eye of beholder, otherwise why would I have a problem with Republican Nutcases whose worldview is "you're either with us, or with the evildoers".

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