Google gives in to China

[shadowdude]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65089,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google's recently launched news service in China doesn't display results from websites blocked by that country's authorities, raising prickly questions for an online search engine that has famously promised to "do no evil."

Dynamic Internet Technology, a research firm striving to defeat online censorship, conducted tests that found Google omits results from the government-banned sites if search requests are made through computers connecting to the Internet in China.

Steered by an identical search request, computers with a United States connection retrieved results from the sites blocked by China.

"That's a problem because the Chinese people need to know there are alternative opinions from the Chinese government and there are many things being covered up by the government," said Bill Xia, Dynamic's chief executive. "Users expect Google to return anything on the Internet. That's what a search engine does."

Interesting. Google is giving in to China's censorship. Your thoughts?

 

[WickedSmurf]

Expected....

 

[yoshi74]

Who said the internet cannot be cencored?

Though there are other search engines as well. Its not that there is a monopol at it (not now at least).

Just imagine what would happen when other goverments came on the same idea.

 

[MajII]

Let's see ... either please the recently boarded shareholders by entering a massive, booming market or stay out and uphold 'principles'. Hmmm ... money or morals ... hmmm

 

[Marla_Singer]

The Chinese speaking Internet will soon be larger than the English speaking Internet. That's an enough good reason to make little sacrifice I guess.

 

[newfangle]

I don't know why any self-respecting company would make concessions to a despotic regime, but hey, to each his own.

 

[Moss]

Not that this makes any difference...

But Google is a relatively new company and in the way of importance on the interent has little power compared to other billion-dollar corporations. So I don't think it is a shock that they would listen to the Chinese...but then again, maybe most would...

 

[stormbind]

That's expected. When you trade in another country, you have to obey their laws.

 

[yoshi74]

I don't know why any self-respecting company would make concessions to a despotic regime, but hey, to each his own.

Shareholders don't want self-respect, but profit. When there is profit to make, self-respect is luxus.

 

[samildanach]

BT has a supercomputer hooked up now that blocks all attempts at viewing known kiddie porn sites. I'm not sure if its just BT customers or if it is anything that works through a BT line.
It logs the IP of the the comp. making the attempt and possibly the machine number as well. Its drawn complaints from civil liberties groups. So, british traffic appears to be censored as well. I don't know much about it other than what I saw on the BBC show "click24".
I personally don't understand the rationale behind it. They seem to want to stop people commiting the crime when in my view they should let them commit it and then arrest them.

 

[hsiehtm]

There's nothing wrong with what Google is doing here. It's not like China is giving Google a choice about having a censored version of Google and an uncensored version of Google. The Chinese government is telling Google either to offer a censored version of Google that restricts viewership of certain websites or all the government will censor all of Google by banning it in China.

 

[Aphex_Twin]

There's also A9 (www.a9.com), presumably a search engine in the league of Google or better.