Google Agrees To China’s
Demands For Censorship!
By Bud Wiser

We take our freedom for granted in the United States. We forget that men and women have died to preserve our freedom. We value our rights, and when our government takes steps to infringe on our rights we speak up! But what about when businesses do business in communist countries for sheer profit with no regards to the people’s rights or conditions in that country? Why do we become so tolerant in those cases?

As you probably have heard already, Google has agreed to China’s demands for search censorship in order to keep google.cn. What this means is Google will be cooperating with the government of China to censor what ever China feels needs to be censored. For example, if you do a search on “human rights conditions in China”, you might get a blank page, or a government approved page. In addition to that your IP address might get blocked for two hours. Google has agreed to these terms. After all who can blame them? The marketing potential in China is huge and practically untapped!

So why did Google have such a hard time when the US government asked them for public data that all the other search engines complied with? Google the lone rebel refused to give up any of their rights or data. The US government was not asking Google for private user information, just search results. The US government was not asking Google to censor any data. Perhaps because Google feels since they have such a large market share of search engines, they could stand up to the very government that made it possible for them to be so successful in the first place.

So we get a glimpse of what Google is really made of. Total bullshit. They gladly bend over backwards for a communist country agreeing to allow censorship of “their data”, and yet they refuse data sampling to the very country that does not allow censorship! I wonder how far Google would have got if they started in China instead of the United States. But all this means nothing to Google executives. The bottom line is the Almighty Dollar!

At least one other source has been just as appauled as I was with Google’s little dirty dance with China. The Bloggers News Network has just announced they will be dropping all Google ads from their pages in protest to Google’s deal with China! Good for you BNN! I hope others follow your lead.

I wonder if Google is worried at all about any of this? Do they think their actions will go unnoticed? Do they think the US government will let these incidents go unchallenged? We know that the US government is currently investigating the deal with China, and reviewing their refusal to provide public data. What the out come will be is any one’s guess, but I would assume that if Google ever needed to be on favorable terms with the US government, this is not the way to do it. I also wonder how this will effect their image to the free world? I wonder how many advertisers will drop Google?

Google may enjoy a large percentage of the search market right now, and may even be able to survive their latest fiasco, but it’s just one more of many others. Let’s not forget their recent attempt to scan all the copyright books for their own database! Ironic they see no wrong with scanning copyright material, aiding in censorship, but see no reason to cooperate with the US government who merely asked for public search records.

Every one has been speculating who will be the one to take down the mighty Google. Will it be MSN, Yahoo!, or some other search engine. It may just turn out to be that Google will be the one responsible for their own fall. There are consequences for all actions. Just because you are on top, does not mean you can do what ever you want. Google is looking more and more like a Evil Empire every day. This has to be chipping away at their image.

Technorati : China, Google, censorship, copyright, evil empire

Posted by Administrator on Thursday, January 26th, 2006 at 9:56 pm.