Looking for evidence of how your country brutally deals with anyone who dares question the regime? Don’t use Google.
January 30, 2006 by Dave Earley
Filed under News
Google has done, and is doing, a large number of exciting and useful things for the internet and access to global information. Launching Google.cn in China, and acquiescing to repressive Chinese censorship demands to do so, is not one of those good things. Best to see how they describe it in their own words:
In order to do so, we have agreed to remove certain sensitive information from our search results.
The search for information is undertaken to inform ourselves of things we otherwise might not have known. With that information we are able to make somewhat knowledgeable decisions about matters that affect us. China has not only a history of repression of dissent and free speech, but also of twisting the arm of companies to help them in these endeavours.
The other online giants, Microsoft and Yahoo, have been criticised for their stance on not only search results but also bloggers (such as myself) who have either been using their blog or web-hosting services. In one case a journalist was identified to Chinese authorities by Yahoo by linking his email account to the IP address of his personal computer. In another Microsoft pulled a Chinese blog that was critical of the government. What does Google and search results have to do with bloggers, Microsoft or Yahoo? Much of China’s upper and middle class, or more importantly students, intellectuals, artists and the ‘educated’ classes, have access to and use the internet to get their news and information.
Google (also from first link) justifies restricting their access to that news and information by saying:
Google users in China today struggle with a service that, to be blunt, isn’t very good.
[...]
Filtering our search results clearly compromises our mission. Failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world’s population, however, does so far more severely.
Except that Google’s service is information. By allowing that information to be restricted they have not improved Google’s service one jot. They may have improved the accessibility of their website, but that is not their service. The information remains unavailable.
A good article on this whole subject by Danny Sullivan at searchenginewatch.com points out that Google also restricts search results in France, Germany and even the USA in accordance with relevant local laws, but as he says:
Today’s news is a fundamental shift. Google isn’t running for the cover of protecting the user experience by omitting some news sites. It’s flat out saying that the Chinese government wants it to do censoring in news search, web search and other areas and that Google will comply.
Another blogger, Rob at sayanythingblog.com, points out that one of the FAQs at Google has been pulled. It asked Does Google censor search results? and answered, in part:
…we do not manipulate our search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results.
When entering the Chinese marketplace democratic ideals can be put aside, and it seems they need to be.
