Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

Did Google have a statement that said anything different than the original statement?

The WSJ said "it would like to continue doing business in China, a week after it said it may pull out of the country due to a sweeping cyber attack"

Google originally said: "We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."

They never said they didn't want to be in China, they just said weren't going to keep censoring and this might lead to them being ejected. They can be perfectly consistent and say they want to continue working in China. The question is whether they expressed any willingness to change their policy.

So what's up? Is Google spinning things or is the WSJ spinning things or what?

People on HN and everywhere else are the ones that are spinning things in their own head.

I wrote the same thing you did the day the news broke out on HN. People thought that I was wrong, and that Google was going to withdraw voluntarily. They downvoted me to around -5 before some of the more rational people bounced it back up.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1050881

I don't think you're writing the same thing as I am now.

The WSJ gives a rather different message than Google originally did. I don't believe that's in the mind of HN.

I would like to know if the WSJ has any concrete information to justify this different message.

I read your original post and I disagree. Google was definitely saying they would take an action (refusing to censor their search results) which would probably result in their withdrawal from China. Whether they meant it or whether they would stick to that position is a different question. But you were wrong then about Google's statement and you're wrong now if you're still defending your previous claim.

The only thing I've read Google saying, all along, is "we don't want to leave but we'll probably be forced to leave". It's a bit subtle but it's the way every large corporation approaches kinds of situations.

Read the rest of the article:

But in a call with analysts, Mr. Schmidt made it clear the company wants to continue doing business in China, one of the world's largest markets, even though it will stop censoring its results.

There is no contradiction with their original statement, but it's very misleading of the WSJ to start the article with the quote you mentioned above, not to mention the headline: "Google Says It Is Committed to China as Net Soars"

I would apply Hanlon's Razor here. I'd venture the journalist misinterpreted what Google was saying, as many headlines on popular news aggregators talked about Google "pulling out of China".

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