Google is a company that has a mission to make the world’s information as universally accessible as possible. And, in their Code of Conduct they state their philosphy is “Don’t be evil.” Both of these seem at odds with how the company operates in China.
In 2006 Google entered the world’s fast-growing internet market by agreeing to censor its search services in China. Everything from sites like Facebook, Twitter and a blog with photos of puppies called Cute Overload as well as key words like ‘human rights’ and ‘Tiananmen Square’ are all fair game to be blocked (see this wonderful infographic of some of the words and URLs that China has on their restricted access list).
But after some highly sophisticated and targeted attacks originating from China that involved trying to breach the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, Google is about to enter a self-imposed China exile.
Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, wrote in a post on the company blog.
We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
Seems like a big decision considering China’s number of internet users is now 384 million. But with only around 25-30% of the search market, Google has never had the same success in China that it has had in Australia, the US or other countries. Local search services like Baidu, and Sina.com provide a product more attuned to local consumers’ needs and the Chinese population being very nationalistic were always somewhat wary of the American search giant.
While Google’s position is certainly commendable from an advocacy of open information and human rights perspective, it is a little late for Google to grow a conscience now by taking a moral position four years too late. Obviously they are concerned about attacks against their users, technology infrastructure and intellectual property but I see this as mostly a business decision by Google to exit a costly restricted market.
I recently discussed the Google/China stand off during my segment with Kelly-Higgins Devine on ABC 612 Brisbane.
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Have a listen by clicking the play button above and tell me if you think Google has made the right decision and if you think it was made on moral or business grounds.
Anthony Dever is an Interactive Strategist at BCM
I was curious about how restrictive China’s “Golden Shield” actually was when I came across the China Channel Firefox add-on.
http://chinachannel.hk/
It’s basically a switch-proxy tool (similar to the anonymizer you probably use to access Facebook in the workplace) that makes the internet think you live somewhere within the Chinese firewall. What you see when using chinachannel isn’t emulation, it’s the party approved search results you’d get if you were really there. Pretty interesting.
The page also has some good links to projects like Free Internet Beijing and Insert Coin that are dedicated to sidestepping internet censorship in these areas.