Google becoming Chinese Puppet?
Google, the world's most prolific search-engine and the creators of blogger.com (where this blog is located) and gmail has signed a deal with the Chinese government to provide searching in China.
I googled "google and china" at news.google.com and found a number of sources about the new deal. The sad news is when a Chinese citizen does the same thing they will not get linked to news stories like this:
Timeonline:
GOOGLE will today cave in to pressure from the Chinese Government by launching a local website that strips out information not approved by the Communist authorities.
The company, whose motto is "Don't be evil", is launching a version of its site that restricts Chinese people from searching for information about Tibetan independence or the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
(snip)
Google is already subject to Chinese government censorship, which blocks search results returning undesired information. The country maintains a sophisticated system of internet monitoring known as "The Great Firewall of China" that restricts access to a range of Western sites.
The company estimates that about 1,000 categoriesagories are blocked by this filtering. No published list of barred terms exists, although the authorities are quick to complain if offending information becomes available.
The average Chinese citizen will never know that there searches are being blocked. Websites will not be loaded, certain words will come back with no results. World events, like the massacre at Tiananmen Square and the brutal oppression of Tibet will never be known.
I wonder what will come up when someone googles "freedom", democracy, " "china human rights".
Google is going to mislead hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens with false information. What is even more disturbing is that they are going against their own mission statement. The FIRST thing Google mentions on their "company overview" is
"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. "I guess the meaning of "universally accessible" is lost in translation from english to mandarin.
posted by Rob at 20:45
2 Comments:
Do note that there are only two options in China: either have Google (in its stripped down form) or not have it. I feel its better that the Chinese have access to Google in some form instead of none. This will be the first step for a more open society and transition to democracy.
Wed Jan 25, 12:24:00 AM CST
I disagree that it is a step in the right direction. Google, to the the average Chinese Citizen will appear like it is providing a more open society, while all the time, the government will have control over content. Right now they know they are shut off from the world, but with Google, they will believe they have access to the world's information and news but in fact will only know what the government wants them to know. THis website, for instance, because it has words like "China" and "Tibet" may not be searchable in China. It is the electronic equivelent to book burning. Google should stand on its principles. Their simple motto of "don't be evil" and to make the worlds information more accessible should give them pause before doing this. What would the international reaction be if google started to limit searches on "War in Iraq" and only send people to Pro-war websites? It would be outrage. Why are we not outraged at this?
Wed Jan 25, 07:39:00 AM CST
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