Now where else but the blogosphere could you get that headline?
The issue at hand is Pajamas Media setting up “China Syndrome,” a special blog listing dealing with the coverage of Google pandering to totalitarian China.
Google’s hypocrisy could not be more evident as they refuse to cooperate with American officials trying to crack down on child porn, citing “privacy” issues, but then for their Google China version, agree to censor search coverage of issues deemed “subversive” by the Chinese government-like the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
For all the blogosphere coverage on this capitulation to tyrants, including Roger L. Simons’ call for divestment of Google, you now have one-stop surfing at Pajamas.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
A dollar is a dollar. It is as simple as that. Google is not being hypocritical. The business morality involved would probably not even consider this a moral issue. There is money in porn if you can get the governing body to cave (we did not create a situation where they would have to close down if they did not comply). There is no money in not being able to operate in the most populous country in the world.
Money is simple. If it is going in your pocket, pick the big number. If it is going out of your pocket, pick the small number. On Google’s end that is all the consideration that is involved.
It is up to us to be as strong as China and say not here.
There’s an interesting Economist article on Google in China, although you can’t get at it unless you’re a subscriber. Apparently Google is making an effort not to abandon its principles; this in contrast to MSN and Yahoo, which went into China and simply caved. I’ll quote a couple of sentences: “[Google] has reached an agreement with the Chinese authorities that allows it to disclose to users … whether information has been withheld. This is similar to what the company does in other countries where it faces content restrictions, such as France and Germany (where Nazi sites are banned… Although the disclosure is more prominent on these western sites, putting such a message on its Chinese site is an important step towards transparency and, furthermore, is something its rivals do not do…. Furthermore, Google is tiptoeing into the country with only a handful of services. It is not offering e-mail, blogging or social-networking services, because it worries that it will not be able to ensure users’ privacy. It wishes to avoid the situation in which MSN and Yahoo! find themselves, whereby they are forced to obey the Chinese government’s orders in censoring content and revealing users’ identities…. Keeping its options open, the company is not shutting down the Chinese-language version of Google.com. It will remain available, for those willing to wait a bit longer for their uncensored search results.”
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