Google, don't politicalize yourself — China's official news agency
news.xinhuanet.com
news.xinhuanet.com
The US basically does. The government never censors the Internet; producing child pornography or running an illegal gambling site may be illegal, but there is no filter on Google to prevent you from finding those things. Terrorism, anti-foreign feelings, racism, government subversion, ethnic separatism, etc., are reprehensible, but are protected speech here. The government could find itself in trouble if it prevented someone from publishing something about one of those topics ("prior restraint"), and has lost many cases where it has tried to remove this information after the fact.
Basically, anything goes except libel, obscenity with no cultural value, and speech to incite imminent lawless action.
So basically Xinhua, get a clue. China is the outlier.
Pervasive: Burma, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, People's Republic of China, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam
Substantial :Australia, Bahrain, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
Nominal and others: Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Ireland, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Malaysia , Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of America
Specifically the US, although not much:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Unit...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/philipjohnston...
Which is even debatable if it was the right thing to do, and it's not like you can't find that movie (Fitna) on the Internet with a simple Google search.
Sorry, but this article is just setting up a straw man.
And it's the same story all over ... governments try to impose more restrictions to "protect" it's citizens ... people fight back by rioting or voting against the government. That's how democracy works ... you win some, you lose some, but mostly it's a balance (I'm thinking about the state of affairs in the EU here).
What really worries me is the current situations where many people and companies are paying lip service to China's policies, even though it's not in their interest to do so.
Sooner or later other governments will adopt similar policies ... hey, if it works so wonderfully in China, why shouldn't it work for the rest of the world? Australia is apparently doing just that ... although it's not like Australia hasn't been guilty of other crimes against humanity, like genocide, so personally I don't have any expectations from them.
Frankly, if I was producing some kind of illegal content that today would land me in jail, I'd rather the government just censor it and leave me my freedom to walk around and produce other types of content that aren't illegal.
I don't see a lot of difference between censorship and threats from the secret service for putting a picture of gwb on your myspace page with a knife stabbed through his hand. If that poor teen had simply had her photoshopped image censored she'd probably have had a less traumatic experience with the whole thing -- she'd still be livid -- but she wouldn't be afraid.
The point is that censorship does happen in the U.S. Playboys have black plastic covers on them in the convenient stores here, but not in Switzerland. Why is it okay for our government to censor some types of things and not others? Where do we draw the line? Perhaps it is being drawn between what most of us find acceptable and that which we don't.
Perhaps China is drawing the same sort of line in what they require Google to filter? Perhaps the stuff they censor creates a social environment that most people don't appreciate just like fuck and nipples in the U.S.
The average American reads this and thinks "that's not quite right, I don't have most of these restrictions."
The average Chinese reads this and thinks "yeah, every country censors, why is Google singling us out?"
In fact, I support Google in this because it is making a statement, even if that's not the primary intention.
It's about something higher, about human rights.China should not be giving any lessons to anyone about this kind of stuff.
I guess China fears that Google's movement will start a pattern of western tech/internet companies leaving China.
Would Chinese companies be able to fill the void leave behind be those companies? I'm not sure.
We are about to watch a game of victimhood (sorry, not sure if that's the word) played by the Chinese Govt. Let's see how that works.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsbc#History
If your company is in China, it's implicitly controlled by the gov't since it has authoritarian rule.
I have witnessed very powerful Chinese officials and businessmen not take action against a rival because the action would have been unlawful and they didn't want to risk the penalties. I have seen mid-level government officials block attempted actions from senior officials because the actions didn't follow the rules.
Here's an anecdote for you: a young chinese lady contracted HIV from a hospital blood transfusion. When it was found out, she was fired from her job and her family threw her out.
She sued. Not just her employer and the government hospital but the government as well for not protecting her. She won.
There are quite a few stories of the little person going up against government and winning.
A few months ago, a waitress at a restaurant (hotel) was being accosted by two drunk men..assuming she was about to get raped, she stabbed them. I think one of them died. Turns out they were high level local officials. The girl was given leniency by the court as they understood it was self-defense.
Fascinating, though I hope history will disagree with the message of this piece.
How is Google trying to manipulate foreign government different from the health industry lobbying for their own interests?
Lobbying can be ok if it's done in a fair and open matter. Which it is not. Lets not forget that corporations have employees and those employees are often better off when their corporation has an easier time doing business.
- Google was never forced to do anything. They chose to. The cost of doing business in any location is abiding by any number of laws that businesses must evaluate to see if they're willing or profitably able to operate within.
- They didn't seem to have many moral problems for the first 4 years.
- They very publicly announced they had a problem with the situation and tried to force the Chinese governments hand with an ultimatum - change the laws or lose Google's business.
I don't have any more evidence for those motives than you do for the ones you presented.
All they were ever bringing to China was the opportunity for themselves to make money. Just like any business anywhere.
I'm proud that google is not above turning away from money on moral grounds. And whether you buy the Press Releases or not they seem to have had plenty of moral reasons for the withdrawal.
Did it take them four years to come to their senses? Why now?
No, they were and remain subject to the same laws and policies the PRC decides. That's why they're leaving.
All that would happens is you'd replace whatever you use with something else, just like every other time something online stops being available.
Even outside of China there are alternatives even if we laugh at their efforts - at this point if you hid Bing behind Google's interface people probably wouldn't even notice the difference most of the time. DuckDuckGo's made by a single guy and seems to be widely applauded.
The biggest argument against some competitors is how familiar we are with Google rather than actual inferiority.
Baidu cannot compete internationally on the strength of their technology. The quality of their results is sub-par, and subject to gaming if you have enough money to pay them. Their market share is as big as it is because of the fact that Baidu is essentially the Chinese Pirate Bay.
Feats somewhat more difficult to reproduce when competing on a level playing field where promoting, aiding and abetting piracy is somewhat frowned upon.
Who would want to compete with the deck stacked against you like that? Sure, China's market may be big enough to mask such deficiencies, blinded as everyone is by that 1 billion+ number, but its a net loss, long term, losing access to a quality competitor.
Lol wut. You need to think about what you're saying. Go "not doing anything" they would be serving up whatever content their algorithm deems relevant.
Its 'censoring' that is doing something, and they simply chose not to do it.
The reason Google didn't have a problem for the first 4 years, is because for the first 4 years it wasn't clear who was going to win the search engine war in China. Now it is clear, the winner is Baidu.
Google is leaving China because they have clearly lost in China and rather than take second place, they are inventing a principled stand and forcing China to kick them out.
Baidu has 3/4 of the search market in China and it's growing.[1] Rather than Google search traffic hitting zero, they're leaving in a political charade. What better excuse for losing to Baidu?
[1] http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/12/28/googl...
It all depends on what kind of politics are being played. Plenty of people in the U.S. supported divestment from South Africa because of apartheid, and would probably still do so if it still existed.
Coke, IBM, etc had to get out. They couldn't own the parts of their companies in SA. So they created new entities and sold them off, or just renamed them, took away the branding rights and sold their shares. The share values took a dive and people that couldn't afford such losses sold. Those that could afford to hold for 10 years bought up all the shares. Keep in mind, you could still buy a coke, it just wasn't branded as coke anymore, the companies still were open for business so much as they could without support from the U.S. entity.
When SA was allowed to take in U.S. investments again, Coke, IBM, etc bought back those entities. Some of the deals were a guaranteed buy back from the initial divestiture. So guess who reaped the rewards, who had the deep pockets to buy up all the shares? Yep, the old-moneyed white guys that the divestiture was supposed to hurt.
Most corporations don't want to be involved in the politics game. However, as MS found out if you aren't involved you quickly become a target of opportunity.
It's a free world for the Chinese gov't if they'd like to do business with companies like Google they'll have to offer a mutually beneficial arrangement.
What really are they going to accomplish? What are they trying to accomplish?
I should have been clear, how is google.cn benefitting google's economy in a way that isn't also being covered by baidu or any other search engine for that matter?
But fair for the CCP to impose it's filtering on the people.
I think the fundamental issue is that they are trying to make improvements (opening up) to its policies but wants to do it on it's on terms, which is slightly understandable. "It" being the Chinese communist party. And the prevailing sentiment among all Chinese is that the west (aka pretty much just US) is meddling in the "opening up." I mean after what the US did in Iraq, I can see why they are hostile.
In fact, no country allows unrestricted flow on the Internet of pornographic, violent, gambling or superstitious content, or content on government subversion, ethnic separatism, religious extremism, racialism, terrorism and anti-foreign feelings.
Not true, the US allows all this, with very minor exceptions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_gambling
So are certain types of porn and anti-government websites.
But all types of porn except child porn are allowed as far as I know. Definitely all types of anti-government websites are allowed. The first amendment confers very strong protection on free speech.
This Chinese news release is trying to mislead. I think the average Chinese citizen would be shocked to learn the level of freedom of expression and access to information in the US.
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The Chinese government is trying to evoke feelings of xenophobia and fear of cultural imperialism to justify its control of information and muzzling of criticism. In this case, it is a total feint to redirect attention away from a core issue: that an uncensored Google lets you find anything, including "objectionable" information. That's not an American idea. The ability to search for information is a core human right.
(Apparently, the state of Kentucky has recently tried to seize gambling-related domain names held by remote entities, but that's a new local enforcement tactic which may not endure.)
Maybe Google should point this out to them.
And there's no rule saying companies need to stay out of politics. Even if there was, Google, from the outset, said it was going to be a different kind of company.
To a certain degree, the same thing is true in America and other western nations. There are a lot of issues to be upset with, and that most people would disagree with the government on. Everyone has problems with the government, and on certain issue most people think the government is wrong (e.g. most people think that Congress spends money wastefully, and that our representatives look at more for their own interests than those of their constituents). But as long as you basically feel that the government is doing the right things -- and I think most people do, looking at things from a holistic perspective -- then you're likely to forgive the transgressions of your government. Or at least you'll limit your disagreement to grumblings, instead of actively protesting or campaigning against the government.
I would argue that the position of the Chinese people is, if not right, at least defensible on these grounds. The quality of life has been improving rapidly in China, and certainly the prestige of the country has been on a huge upswing for the past twenty years (e.g. in economic terms, the space program, political power in international diplomacy, etc.). In such an environment you might not be too worried about Internet censorship (most of which is probably censoring things you don't really care about). As their expansion catches up with them, and the rate that China can increase its wealth and prestige slows down, that will probably change, and people will find more reason to be concerned with censorship and other human rights issues within China. But that could be a while off.
When the bird flu broke out, China blocked Taiwan's access to the World Health Organization to get information on how to deal with it--mostly on the grounds that it is an internal affair.
<sacasm> ...except Sealand </sarcasm>
Anyway, there is a great divide between letting a good majority of this kind of stuff through vs blocking as much of it as you can (eg, 99.9% vs ~30%)
In both instances you can say that no country is allows unrestricted flow, but that is not an adequate measuring stick for data flow.
Quoted for truth.
Doesn't sound like they're leaving to me. If they were to leave properly they would shut down all operations and 404 the .cn domain. Instead they've just redirected and uncensored their services. To me thats just more drama, another move on the chessboard.