Google signals U-turn over Chinese site (The Guardian)

[Up2Late]

(And while on the subject, FRONTLINE has posted a notice that their recent show "Tank Man" IS being blocked in China, link below)

Google signals U-turn over Chinese site

Oliver Burkeman in New York and Bobbie Johnson
Thursday June 8, 2006
The Guardian

Internet giant Google may reverse its decision to launch a censored version of its search engine in China, one of the company's founders has said.

Sergey Brin said the Californian company had "felt that perhaps we could compromise on our principles, but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese" with Google.cn, which does not link to results for politically incendiary terms such as "Tiananmen Square" or "Falun Gong", the religious movement banned by the Chinese government. But Mr Brin said he could consider reversing that decision. "Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense," he told reporters in Washington.

Google was widely accused of ignoring its informal motto, "Don't be evil", in favour of commercial gain when the Chinese service began in January. Campaigners have voiced strong concerns about the conflict between the repressive regime in Beijing and Google's commitment to freedom of information, but representatives for the company have argued that a policy of engagement is more valuable to Chinese internet users than refusing to deal with the authorities. Mr Brin intimated that Google could now be considering another approach.

"It's perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say, 'Look, we're going to stand by the principle against censorship, and we won't actually operate there'. That's an alternate path," said the Russian-born entrepreneur, 31, who founded Google with Larry Page in 1996, when they were at Stanford University.

(more at link)

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,1792638,00.html?gusrc=rss>

<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/>

FRONTLINE's Censored Report
Seventeen years ago, China's army massacred civilians in the streets of Beijing who were demonstrating for greater freedoms. Known in China as "June Fourth," its citizens can't openly talk about it and this recent FRONTLINE report on the event, "The Tank Man," has been blocked on the Internet by the government.View the report and related material on China's efforts to censor the Web.

[bennywhale]

1. Well trhank God for that. i've been looking for an alternative with

morals ever since. The power of google to put pressure on the Chinese regime by pulling out should not be underestimated, it is one of THE global information giants, if your countries not got google somethings up.

i've been calling them greedy cowards ever since this decision here on DU and elswhere, and have been met as usual with a lethargic oh well and some abuse and accustaions of naivity.

[truthisfreedom]

2. i thought their motto was "You can make money without doing evil."

not "don't be evil." type "do no evil" into google.

[rman]

3. If only people would hold other corporations to the same standard

as they hold google. Large US/transnational corporations employ Chinese workers under virtual slave labor conditions on a massive scale. None of that hardly ever gets any attention, yet google is made out to be bad because of their Chinese search page.

[MrPrax]

5. No Kidding...

Good post...

Yeah I always thought the REAL issue was not whether the Chinese can look up oppression in their country on a search engine, but exactly what WE should be doing about the oppression in their country with information provided by that search engine...

Apparantly not a whole hell of a lot...so why should Google (a corporation) be leading the charge for freedom, when Wal-Mart and virtually every western government has done a hell of a lot more than Google has done to make a buck off the Chinese slave-state...

Talk about hypocrisy...

[Up2Late]

4. kick n/t

:kick: