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Google claims China action coming soon

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 9 Feb 2012 at 07:37

Google claims negotiations with Beijing over the fate of its Chinese business are nearly at an end.

"We are in active negotiations with the Chinese Government," Eric Schmidt told reporters in Abu Dhabi. He declined to say how far along these negotiations were, but claimed "something will happen soon."

In January, the search giant reported an attack on its network originating from China that resulted in the theft of its intellectual property.

Google went on to claim than 20 other companies had been infiltrated, and that hackers had also turned their attention to the email accounts of dissidents and human-rights advocates.

In protest, the company vowed to stop censoring the results of its Chinese site, risking expulsion from the lucrative market.

Though Google has yet to show uncensored results, it has been in negotiations with the Chinese Government, which has maintained that the company must operate in compliance with its laws.

The incident has become a cause of friction between China and the US, with the States putting pressure on Beijing to open up the web to its citizens.

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User comments

Yeah?

Much as I detest censorship, Google need to put it's money where it's mouth is and to either pull out of China all together or to comply with local law.

Enough of this flip flopping. Do something already.

I'm also more than a little shocked by the reaction of the media to this. Most of the big media are crying for blood (and they don't care whose blood it is), and most of the small media are more or less openly calling for a US multi national to violate the laws of a foreign country. They might not be good laws (some of them are downright nasty) but they are the laws of a government that is internationally recognized as being the legitimate and sole government of China.

Seriously, is this the image that we want to promote to China, that our press wants our companies to go to their country and to violate their laws?

Suppose that a Japanese company decided that it didn't agree with our child porn laws (Most of the stuff that can't be shown until 18 here can be shown at 16 there, or even younger if it is illustrated/animated). If a Japanese company said that Western laws amounted illegal censorship and then openly set out violate them, western countries be up in arms.

It's the same for on line meds. The government is up in arms about foreign companies trying to sell foreign meds even if said meds are perfectly good meds.

Well, this is how many Chinese feel about Google.

It's not just the free speech stuff. China has tough anti pron laws as adult media has no constitutional protection in China, and most Chinese are against internet porn (deeply conservative country where they don't want their one and only legally allowed child to grow up seeing pictures of graphic sex online). By dropping censorship Google would effectively be dropping porn filtering, too (which is much stricter in for Google China). You could actually have a situation where Google drops its censorship and allows graphic child pornography to be shown, or sites inciting murder and racial hatred.

By Perfectblue97 on 13 Mar 2010

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