Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsgo | Hacker News Reader

maybe from a philosophical standpoint, but in the end then the Chinese people don't have access to Google.

The options in China are similarly censored. So it isn't like Google would be engaged in something that is an outright negative for the end Chinese user.

Maybe people prefer Google to Baidu/Bing/whatever. So if you are getting the same x results from Baidu, Bing, Google, etc. but you prefer Google's experience/filtering/page rank/whatever, are you hindered in any meaningful way beyond what you were already by using the censored version of them?

View on HN

You are right on having a preference that Chinese people would like much more over "Baidu/Bing/whatever". I will give you that. But let's look at it from another perspective.

What stops then some other country to have the exact same exception for themselves? If you can do it for China, surely you can do it for us, right? Legally, this would work.

This situation has a risk of building a dangerous base against freedom :/

You are unmeasurably right. Some people still continue to defend censor in spite of all these; I tell them this will also be abused against them. See my username.

I don't think it is a situation that people are for censorship so much as they don't see any net benefit in avoiding a market that does do censorship.

Google was in China at one point. They took a stand and got out. Since then, Android has taken over the world. Also in that time, China has become one of the, if not the, biggest markets in mobile. So Google's creation, Android, is being sold within China completely divorced of everything that makes Google commit to Android in the first place. They've really gained nothing except a moral victory during this period and have lost considerably for said stand.

Feels really weird defending Google to be really honest, but in this particular case, I understand the decision to release a censored Google there. They fought the government and the government won.

If some other country ask for something similar, then Google should either give them or quit that country. Simple as that. If Google, or any company, wants to operate in a country, they need to obey their laws.

It is not like Google has not done it before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google

I am genuinely little confused here. Are you defending cencorship?

I don't think all the cencorship out there are good; and I don't think all of them are bad as well. More importantly, I don't think my view on cencorship is the point here. My point is, Google should not be the one who fight against any laws.

As an example, in Saudi Arabia, all women are required to wear an abaya a long black cloak that covers all, but the hands and face in public. [1] Is that a good law? I don't know. But if Google wants to do business there, e.g. some female Google employee went on business trip in Saudi Arabia, she needs to obey the law there. Of course Google can choose not to do any business in Saudi Arabia. Google can even exits Saudi Arabia as a sign of protesting this law. But if I were a Saudi Arabia resident who would suffer from lack of access to information online, I would certainly hope Google does not do this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Saudi_Arabia#Dress

If Google makes its female Saudi employees wear thesethese cloaks in public but gets to provide an uncensored search engine there, that's a win. But it can't follow censorship laws while providing an uncensored search engine. And a search engine that censors what the Chinese government wants to censor is pretty much broken.

> I don't think all the cencorship out there are good; and I don't think all of them are bad as well.

This one is too broad of a topic to fit in this thread I think.

> My point is, Google should not be the one who fight against any laws.

I agree that it is not Google's job to fight against laws of a country. But, what we are talking here is freedom of speech, and freedom of Internet. The reason Google is the point of the discussion is because of their dominance worldwide when it comes to accessing information.

Let's have imaginary country named A. And Google wants to enter this country by providing a search engine. But country A has a law that states "It is illegal to say/read/write that Earth is round"

What do you think Google and other companies that lead the way for accessing information on Internet should do?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com