Google and China
Google’s been taking some flak lately (Yahoo, Slashdot) for agreeing to censor their search results for users inside China. (In an earlier post, I briefly mentioned Google’s “don’t be evil” policy.) Quite a few people have been talking about this and the contradiction between “don’t be evil” and their Chinese censorship. I’m actually not really an opponent or advocate of Google on this issue. It’s true that Google is playing accomplice to Chinese censorship here, but it’s not as if they have an option to offer uncensored searches to the Chinese. China would simply block Google out of the Chinese market if they didn’t agree to this. Further, there are already some censored search engines available inside China. So, from Google’s standpoint, taking the moral highground by refusing to censor websearches would block them out of the Chinese market (a large and growing market), it would give those Chinese search-engines a large google-free environment where they could grow and ultimately challenge Google in the future. From that standpoint, agreeing to censor their websearches helps Google suppress potential rivals from emerging out of China.
For those who are curious, here’s some comparisons between what Google.com returns versus what Google.cn (Chinese-based Google) returns. At Google.cn, you won’t find anything but tourist information when you search on “Tiananmen Square”. A few comparisons:
Tiananmen Square images: Google.com, Google.cn (Interesting note: a few pages into the China search shows a few pictures that slipped through the filter.)
Tiananmen Square search: Google.com, Google.cn (What? Something happened in Tiananmen Square?)
Falun Gong: Google.com, Google.cn (Falun Gong is a crazy cult that originated in China about 15 years ago. The Chinese government is scared because they’ve gained lots of followers, so they’ve been cracking down on them.)
Tibet: Google.com, Google.cn (Surprisingly, Google.cn returns almost as many hits as Google.com; Google.cn is returning lots of links to websites China disagrees with - like FreeTibet.com.)
Dongzhou: Google.com, Google.cn (Protests against the government occured in Dongzhou last month. The Chinese Police fired on them and killed some of them - somewhere between 6 and 20 killed. Google.cn returns about one-quarter as many results as Google.com, but there are still plenty that talk about the event. I had heard that regular Chinese news was completely silent about the event. The Chinese version of Yahoo has been scrubbed of information about the event.)
I’m not looking forward to China’s rise to power. It’s true that China has generally been low-key about imposing its will beyond its immediate neighbors (for example, they often abstain from UN security council votes). But, I’ve had discussions with Chinese on the internet, and some of them are terribly nationalistic. (I don’t really know how common this rabid nationalism is because for all I know 99% of them are non-argumentative, and I’m only hearing the loud 1%.) Mention anything about Tibet or Taiwan and they’ll react with righteous indignance that you don’t also see that they are the rightful property of China. Mention that millions of Chinese died under Mao’s Cultural Revolution and “Great Leap Forward” and they’ll claim that it’s a Western exaggeration and propaganda. Based on their unerring support of the Chinese government’s policies, I have wondered in the past if I was actually talking to Chinese government workers hired to brow-beat anyone who doesn’t follow their government’s official stance and introduce uncertainty about the facts. It might also be the case that Chinese who oppose their government’s policies never speak a word about it in public, resulting in a filter that keeps everyone quiet (out of fear) except for the loyal Chinese nationalists who know that their government will look favorably on their unswerving support. I don’t know, but if the mainstream Chinese opinion is anything like the stuff I’ve seen on the internet, then a well-muscled China is going to be a huge pain.
- [Update: Several articles backing Google have appeared in the news today - Bill Gates defends Google move, BBC: Why Google in China makes sense. The latter article is somewhat galling when it states, "Here in the UK we have many restrictions on what we can say online. Libels, speech likely to incite violence or racial hatred, names of serving intelligence officers and even computer-generated images of sexual acts involving children are all illegal and suppressed." - as if libel, hate-speech, and child pornography is in any way comparible to coverup of government wrongdoings and censorship of political and religious ideas.]
- [Update #2: Google Responds - "For several years, we've debated whether entering the Chinese market at this point in history could be consistent with our mission and values...."]