Still Not Evil. (warning: ranty)
Saturday, February 18, 2006 - 2:00 PM
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So there's been much sound and fury recently over Google's entry into the Chinese search market, because that entry has required them to self-censor. It's been widely reported that searches on the new google.cn for "Tiananmen Square", for example, return no mention of the 1989 massacre which dominates Western searches for the term.
(In fact, it does: the fourth result down at this moment is an English-language site detailing the massacre with a series of photographs. Warning: dead people. It's my suspicion that this site made it onto this search page via Google-bombing, the same tactic which gave us the famous Google result for "miserable failure". It's also my suspicion that that page won't be on the search results for long.)
Numerous organizations, including upstanding ones like "Reporters Without Borders" and less upstanding ones like the House of Representatives, have come out strongly against Google's agreement to self-censor in order to be allowed to play ball in the lucrative and rapidly-growing Chinese marketplace. I agree strongly with their main points: censorship is bad, and colluding with dictatorial regimes in the interest of money is surely worse.
But there is
another side to the story, and despite my usual bias against people defending their own profit-making enterprises by couching them in morality, I think it deserves a look.
Google claims, essentially, that access to some information is better than access to no information. This is not true in all cases (propaganda, anyone?), and if Google were in fact simply making a "me-too" dive into a market already populated by Microsoft and Yahoo, it wouldn't be true here. But Google has made apparently earnest efforts to make sure that search censorship is as far from information censorship as they can possibly make it. Alone of the Big Three western search engines, Google.cn includes, at the bottom of the page, a big black bold warning:
据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示。
It translates roughly into, "In accordance with local laws and regulations, and Google's policy, some of your search results were not displayed." The warning appears under searches for censored topics such as "Tienanmen Square", but not for other stuff. This statement has been criticized as a pathetic, flaccid attempt at whitewashing a flagrant attack on free speech, but c'mon guys: I think we all know the difference between being told that X is true, and being told that X is true but you're not getting the full story. It's not like the Chinese population doesn't know its government censors stuff, and putting up a little red flag over precisely what's been censored is far and away better than not. The warning itself is information, and powerful information at that. Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft serves such a warning.
Now, again, clearly free speech is good and colluding with dictators for cash is bad. But why didn't Microsoft and Yahoo get called before Congress when they went in, scores of months ago? Why, when Yahoo and Google did get called before Congress this last Wednesday to answer for their sins, Google got repeatedly lambasted by the Republican committee chair for violating its sacrosanct "Don't be evil" motto, but Yahoo wasn't grilled on its
extensive collusion with the Chinese government, in which it gave Beijing access to the contents of suspected dissidents' e-mails? This collusion has
landed several reporters and dissidents in jail. (Yahoo's defense of itself in those actions: "We had to." Google, not wanting to get into a situation where it has to, has decided to not offer e-mail or blogs in China.)
From whence this disparity? I don't know. But I do know that Google's stock dropped precipitously last week, in part due to investor jitters over possible government retaliation. From whence the fear of retaliation? Google's recent
decision to stand up to the Bush Administration's request for massive amounts of anonymous search data. I hate conspiracy theories, but it would explain why Congress has played softball with Yahoo and Microsoft, and done everything in its power to pin Google to the front page for as long as possible.
Conspiracy or no, I think that Google's been taking a lot of undeserved bad rap for this. It really seems, to all appearances, that Google has done everything in its power - from flagging censored searches to refusing to offer services which would legally bind it to be evil - to make sure that its entry into the Chinese market is good for freedom of speech, and bad for oppression. Of course there's money involved, more money than any of us will ever see in our lifetimes. But I've looked at this story long and hard, and I just don't see evil in Google's actions.
What do you guys think?
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