Google defies Chinese censorship

Too late Google, the damage is done. The Chinese will have taken your technology and all they need from you now. So losing you will be irrelevant.

Shame you couldn't have taken this stance from the beginning, you'd have earned respect for that.

By Grunthos on 13 Jan 2010

A chance for M$ to slip in and bow down to Chinese demands :) (and then also have their code nicked :D )

By nicomo on 13 Jan 2010

I can't help but ask if this means that Google is going to take a stand against other repressive regimes that require tech companies to censor their services or to hand over details of disidents. Given that France and Germany are two of the worst offenders in the free world, and that Australia looks set to become a pretty big offender, too. I doubt it very much.

It looks like it's going to be yet another case of one rule for us and another rule for them. Google will make a big show over "fighting repression" in China because China's a big scary bogeeyman that it's OK to hate, but it will be business as usual in other countries where it is no politically correct to talk about censorship, or where censorship is swept uncder the carpet.

Still, maybe Google will shame some other companies into at least acknowledging that what they are doing is wrong.

By Perfectblue97 on 13 Jan 2010

Rather ironic given Google Boss Eric Schmidt's recent comments:

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

"it is possible that information will be made available (by Google) to the authorities"

Perhaps this calibrates Google's famous slogan: "do not be quite as evil as the Chinese Government."

And PerfectBlue97 - are you one of the Chinese Government's famous paid trolls or can you substantiate those ridiculous allegations about the French, Germans and Australians?

By JohnAHind on 13 Jan 2010

Too little, too late, but still the correct thing to do. As Grunthos said it's a shame they didn't do this from the start.

By Minou on 13 Jan 2010

Agreed this gives Google nothing but good publicity, even if they don't pull the plug and the status quo is maintained they've lost nothing.

I remember the good old days when Google was the underdog and all it waned to do was provide a quicker was of searching, these days it's run more like Microsoft with Hitler in charge!!!

By anthonysjones on 13 Jan 2010

@JohnAHind

Regarding France, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8436745.st
m should make it clear

By thewelshbrummie on 13 Jan 2010

google censorship

@JohnAHind,
Well, I would advise you to do a search for “google censorship germany” and “google censorship australia” and you will know very soon what Perfectblue97 is talking about.

By stasi47 on 13 Jan 2010

@thewelshbrummie

The BBC link to France is to a story concerning internet piracy and illegal downloading. I fail to see how this makes France a "repressive regime that requires tech companies to censor their services or to hand over details of dissidents", unless you regard illegal downloaders as dissidents or stopping the practice to be censorship.

By AdrianB on 14 Jan 2010

JohnAHind:

Somebody obviously hasn't been listening to the news.

France and Germany are both well known Internet censors. Under post war laws all Internet companies operating in France and Germany are required to filter out any content sympathetic to the Nazi in history or contemporary times. Internet companies are also forbidden form displaying Nazi logs or selling memorabilia. Yahoo was famously sued a few years back because of this. The case was in November 2006 as I recall, but intrnet censorship goes back long before that. Fact of history.

If you don't believe me, then maybe you would belive this article for a well known British newspaper

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/in
ternet-auctioneers-ban-sale-of-nazi-items-753951.h
tml

Australia is also attempting to bring in laws requiring ISP level filtering.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Na
tional-filter-protest-6-March/0,130061791,33930031
2,00.htm?omnRef=http://news.google.com/news?q=aust
ralia%20isp%20filter&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-G
B:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=
en&tab=wn

I'm actually an anti-censorship campaigner, so I know what I'm talking about. Unlike you, who appears to have been raised on a diet of Fox/ABC, and who thus knows very little about the real world.

Google censors its services in several big name Western democracies, including the US and UK, and unless it also acts to fight censorship in these countries then it's actions in China are next to meaningless.

I suggest that rather than making a silly little fuss you put Google to use and look up claims of censorship made against it.

By Perfectblue97 on 14 Jan 2010