Google Admits China Censorship Was Damaging 205
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.
Agreed.. but why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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> to find uncensored content
No. Because China had (and still has) access to google.com (working around 90% of the time, according to Google).
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This is an idiotic sentence. I think it's quite damningly clear how it can be considered "morally wrong" if you value freedom of information, which google purports to do as per its "do no evil" philosophy. Exactly that: "do no evil" for the good of the profit. What they do in allowing china to censor its product is allowing evil for the sake of profit.
I'm sorry
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Here's my reasoning: for an action to be "morrally wrong", you must first have a choice in whether or not to do the action, and Google obviously had a choice. Furthermore, for an action to be morally wrong, there must be a choice which is more morally right than the the alternative/s. One of the Exorcist remakes had
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.
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Not true. (Score:2)
Becau
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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).
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The problem with the consequentialist view, in my opinion, is that it leads to the rationalization of some very serious wrongs. Example:
I am given the job of rounding up political dissidents in a totalitarian state. I know that they will be jailed and tortured once I bring them back to the government. So if someone is going to do
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Definitely, which is why I aim at the "stricter" guidelines but allow for flexibility in some cases. I believe it is important to have strong moral guidelines, even if the conclusions they lead to are less than perfect.
Regarding your example, I would probably continue to send the food because it truly is life or death (I would need to know more about the details of the situation to come up with a more concise answer)
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.
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Sure, like segregation.
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Google can apologise all it wants to,
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Kudos for asking the simple yet crucial question. In fact putting the accent on the business level of the decision is more evil than letting China have its way with censorship. That is a kind of propaganda for a money-based [a]moral system. Perhaps I'm just paranoid.
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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
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Even if we were, on Slashdot the opposition to such policies as you have mentioned happening in the USA is HUGE, so comparing the two will just get you a similar response. "Censorship is wrong." I am American, and the fact that Scientology and the DMCA corrupted Google search results offends me greatly. Google was around a number of years before the law wen
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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.
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Furthermore, the 3rd store that cannot exist in China could work with trusted couriers and underground agents (read encryption/anonymizing proxies) to deliver those products that aren't allowed to be sold under Chinese law. That would truly be "doing
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This happens all the time with drug stores that off
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.
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Now that's about the dumbest thing I've heard, and yet I keep hearing it. Do you really think that doing something good does not provide a company with positive PR? Can't positive PR lead to better brand recognition and loyalty? Can't brand recognition and loyalty lead to increased sales / popularity / use by customers? On the opposite side, the idea that doing something evil leads to money is just as ridiculous. If corporations are motivated by money, and doing good deads le
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.
Re:Sticking with mistakes (Score:2)
True, but before deciding, evaluate the facts.
Fact, the nice new printer from Dell looks nice, but the ink can not be bought localy, the carts are 1/4 the size of the competetors, and you have to pay S & H to get them. They make no claims to how much ink is in a cartridge or estimated page yield.
Getting the printer was a mistake. Ordering ink for it would have been a second mistake. Kept my old printers instead.
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Now as far as making money, a company that i
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I have no doubt taking this view of the world is how investors sleep at night.
The fact of the matter remains that companies are good and evil. Some will stop at nothing to make money. Others will make (less) money, on principle.
There are a great many companies out there, making f
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And also do you think that the majority of Microsoft (or another Slashdot popular "evil" IT empire) make more immoral decisions than Google employees? What, are they cheating on their wi
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I actually do agree with you and I don't think you are naive. I was just pointing out that the "goodness" of big companies is just a careful marketing facade because intuition or marketing research tells that if a company is viewed as "good" it will be more profitable.
But when Google parades it's "do no evil" policy I would hope that everyone would not be fooled and actually believe that when it comes t
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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
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The move to be in China at all has MORE than made-up for that discrepancy. They lost a little Western market share to pick-up a billion NEW users.
I don't see any other way to read this, yet noone has brought it up.
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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We might be powerless but we're not dumb (Score:2)
I think people are smart enough to tell the difference between the ones doing the shooting and the ones getting shot at.
People are smart enough to distinguish between a government and the public at large. Governments go off and do their own thing. The public don't have a choice. Democracy? Some of us get to vote every 4 years between 2 parties which are nearly identical and have the sa
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It's a simple fact, isn't it?
I assume everybody is capable of telling it. But whether people bother to tell it, is another question. One quickly loses his/her ability to reason when some strong emotion is mobilized. That's how the neo-conservatives, in fact, most politicians, get their way.
Certainly the average American people has more power than the average Chinese, and arguably ave
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> is another question. One quickly loses his/her ability to reason when some strong
> emotion is mobilized. That's how the neo-conservatives, in fact, most politicians, get their way.
These days people travel a lot. It's common to meet backpackers and students from other countries.
We have the Internet to communicate with each other. It changes perceptions. I hope most people
realize the rest of the world are a lot like
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I agree if people from different countries get to know each other face to face, they are more likely to find the stereotypical perception to be wrong. That's part of the reason I'm on slashdot.
I'm not going to criticize either the current US administration or the general public. Others have done that much better th
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Idealism ends in an oven. Without balance, the world perverses itself.
These tenets are what should really be taught. Unfortunately, with the teachers being invested in the status quo and their own ideas, the war is likely to intensify.
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News for emotional nerds. (Score:2)
Far too many stories are sensationalized for their own sake. This is incredibly sad for a site that is supposed to be for nerds. And in the unlikely event a story hasn't been spun this way in the summary, there is always some extremist blowhard in the comments who either:
1. Wildly speculates about an uncomfortable fu
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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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So is discussing the situation in China online from within the country ;) But I guess your online discussions are safely encrypted.
Right, but I'm surprised that when it comes to doing business, moral is no category at all. Not even for those who are "not evil". Refusing to stay i
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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)
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Of course, tiananmen square student tanks [google.cn] return any results, unlike the same elsewhere [google.com].
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I should try using the preview button one of these days.
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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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You could even argue that they would have a responsibility to shareholders to be doing business there, sacrifices or not, but society would probably step in and say 'Nope, you don't
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That's true, and it makes it legal, but it certainly doesn't make it right.
A company like Google, which puts so much effort into good PR, deserves to be raked over the coals for doing things like this.
I see. So now it's "Don't be evil, unless lots of money is on the line." ?
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Censorship is indeed the fault of the Chinese government. It is also the fault of Google for aiding and abetting China in their censorship program.
That is what you really meant. Some of us believe that the correctness of an action is not simply a function of the profit it will generate.
Hey, if the
Google Apologists (Score:2)
> did was respect and abide by the laws of the country they're trying to do business in.
When IBM installed and programmed card machines to sort out the Jews and Gays, they were thinking just like you.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0213/black.php [villagevoice.com]
All that is required for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing, and greedy ones to say they're just following the laws in the country they're trying to do business in. Just because
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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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?
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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
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And for what it's worth, the China censorship thing was the main reason I "left" Google (as in, closed my gmail account and all my other personalised services).
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
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I was watching a tv program the other day called "Weapons of World War 2" on the history channel. They have shows about tanks, fighter planes, submarines etc. This particular show was about aircraft carriers. At the beginning of the show, they showed pictures of the modern US carriers with the voice-over saying that "todays modern self contained carriers can strike at the heart of terrorism where-ever it may be in the world".
W
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> But somehow, when it's China involved, manipulation of information is the worst thing in the world. Take a look closer to home.
On the contrary, I agree with you. Look at Iraq.
We have a huge problem with a corporate media telling us what to think (Hi, Rupert), but we do have basic protections like free speech which the government hasn't taken away from us... yet. The Internet makes it wonderfully hard for them to even
Forgotten Killing Fields (Score:2)
> Do you have sources for that? When I was in Cambodia it wasn't my impression that the Cambodian government tries
> to deny their country's past.
Aware that Cambodia is *nothing* like China, and yes, they do try. From memory, no one had talked about the Killing Fields and it wasn't taught in schools. Having gone so long having heard nothing, when someone finally says something, it's
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.
Sounds familiar (Score:2)
What they say and what they do (Score:4, Interesting)
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No wonder you can get Wikipedia.
Another conspiracy theory... (Score:2)
Come on, moderators, if only you had bothered to click on that link, you would have known what the post said was not true.
I can visit google.cn from UK. I use it almost everyday, along side google.co.uk. I don't get redirected to google.com in either case.
Others reported from Europe and USA that they didn't get redirected either.
If google don't redirect traffic from Europe and USA, why should they redirect that from anywhere else? Give me a reason.
The bottom line is, this guy d
Lying assholes... (Score:2)
Were that true then this could *not possibly happen*: The reporter concludes that Google is unlikely to revise its Chinese censorship policy any time soon.
Why? Because Google is publically traded. The shareholders could sue the pants off him and the the Google executive team. "Net Negative" meant *losing* money, which means something that, as a business, they would want to fix ASAP.
So, what did they guy REALLY mean when he says that?
Economically speaking (Score:2)
So, economically, yes, it is a smart move.
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