[Forgone Conclusion]

Google has set up a chinese version of itself, but has only been allowed to do so under the condition it ommits certain results which reflect badly on China's government.

I tested this by searching 'Oppression of tibet' on both .co.uk and .cn versions of google, and about 100,000 results mysteriously dissapeared

In fairness, there were still many results which were saying tibet was oppressed by china, but there were obviously not as many. Also, I'd imagine that they are much stricter on sites written in chinese (someone could verify that?).

So. What do you think? Has google sold out it's principles of freedom of information just to access the (huge) market of china? Do you think what they have doine is wrong? etc, etc

oops, wrong forum - someone please move this

This post has been edited by Forgone Conclusion: 25 January 2006 - 09:00 PM

[where_i'm_calling_from]

actually only about 50,000 are removed. i don't think there's really many ethical considerations in setting up a search engine...and thus meh. it's obviously 'wrong', but i don't blame them.

[Echoes]

i don't think google should be manually editing its search engine results at all, actually. just think how much sick and twisted and morally reprehensible things you could find using google. nobody is asking it to comment on what you're searching for.

[Droogie]

The Aristocrat, on Jan 25 2006, 09:51 PM, said:

i don't think google should be manually editing its search engine results at all, actually. just think how much sick and twisted and morally reprehensible things you could find using google. nobody is asking it to comment on what you're searching for.

but its not google that chose to do this. they were ordered to filter the results by the chinese government, and google would rather comply than not be able to operate at all. and if ALL of china couldnt use google thats a big loss for them.

[Echoes]

i realise google has to serve its shareholders and make money for them whenever possible (it's corporate law, ever since Mr Dodge successfully sued the Ford Corporation for paying its employees more than the bare minimum, instead of paying the shareholders bigger dividends) but I would have quite liked google to take the moral highground here, not be a fascist state's little bitch for the sake of a few more dollars

[Droogie]

in this case even if i did care about morals and shit, the chinese still need a decent search engine and i would provide that.

also, morals vs a few billion dollars... i think i'll take the money

[Forgone Conclusion]

Firstly, they dont need the money. Secondly china had lasted this long without google, they could have lasted longer.

Google could have just refused to supply them with the service. Google's whole ethic is that they are relatively 'friendly', they don't filter or rearrange searches, etc. Doing this compromises this completely. They weren't 'ordered' to do it. In fact, they could still have set up athe unfiltered site, it's just CHina would have put it behind their 'great firewall of china' and prevented access

[Droogie]

Forgone Conclusion, on Jan 25 2006, 10:13 PM, said:

Firstly, they dont need the money. Secondly china had lasted this long without google, they could have lasted longer.

yes silly but now is the time that more and more people are using computers. and who doesnt need money?

Forgone Conclusion, on Jan 25 2006, 10:13 PM, said:

They weren't 'ordered' to do it. In fact, they could still have set up athe unfiltered site, it's just CHina would have put it behind their 'great firewall of china' and prevented access

dude, thats what i meant. i mean what is the difference?

This post has been edited by Droogie: 25 January 2006 - 10:24 PM

[Forgone Conclusion]

The difference is that they chose to do it, rather than being ordered to.

More and more people are using computers? Lets face it, computer usage is pretty much as high as it's gonna get. There aren't very many more people using computers now than there were a few years back, and there is gonna be an even smaller increase in the future

Who doesn't need money is irrelevant really. The fact of the matter is that google sold out to china (something they promised in an interview last year they would never do).

[Droogie]

Quote

The difference is that they chose to do it, rather than being ordered to.

well in EITHER situation its either you comply and operate or dont filter and be blocked. in effect theyre still being ordered to filter their results. makes no difference.

Quote

Lets face it, computer usage is pretty much as high as it's gonna get.

not in china.

if they really don't need the money, then maybe they were doing it to provide a good search engine for the people of china?

[The Phlegmy One!111]

Some of the responses are ridiculous - Google don't need the money. Google is not just one person who owns everything. Also, a company doesn't need to comply to such crap as 'oh noe u sold12 ouTa!'. Also, if google hadn't done it, do you think everyone else would have followed their lead? Bullshit. Google have been a friendly company? What company would like to put itself across as unfreindly? And they don't filter results? yeah right. Firstly, all results are undergone the first level of filteration for obsene things. Secondly, sponsors are put higher up the list. And thirdly, they have an optional filter on top of that. And as Tommy said, computer usage still has a lot to rise in China and lesser so in India. For the first time, I genuinley disagree with everything Curtis said, and not just out of principle.


PS. China have lasted this long without google? Is that even a fucking arguement? Google is a great convinence as opposed to a necessity, so of course they could last longer without it.

[Forgone Conclusion]

There is a difference between low level filtration for incredibly racist material, and simply inhibiting what is essentially a human right

Google's whole ethos is to be friendly. Obviously, all companies want to be seen in a good light, but google actively underwent major action to do so in order to be user firendly. Their motto is 'do no evil'. I don't see how essentially condoning the chinese government's choice in inhibiting free press/speech adheres to that. Also, as i believe I said, google promised last year that they would never bow to pressure from the chinese government just in order to gain more profit

Google don't put their sponsers higher up. People who pay them get advertising space on the side of the screen, not put at the top of the results.

Nobody ever said that a company can't sell out. Let's face it, anyone CAN sell out, i'm just saying that they did.

Also, it's fairly obvious that this isn't predominantly google's fault, I'm just playing devil's advocate here. The real problem lies with chinese government and their generally poor human rights record, although I do think that google should have held out as a matter of principle

[Droogie]

i didnt know i had the right to be told whatever i wanted to know by google. if thats so, google have violated my human rights many many times.

[The Phlegmy One!111]

"PLAYBOY: How did you respond when the Chinese government blocked Google because your search engine pointed to sites it forbade, including Falun Gong and pro-democracy websites?

BRIN: China actually shut us down a couple of times.

PLAYBOY: Did you negotiate with the Chinese government to unblock your site?

BRIN: No. There was enough popular demand in China for our services—information, commerce and so forth—that the government re-enabled us.



PLAYBOY: Have you ever agreed to conditions set by the Chinese government?

BRIN: No, and China never demanded such things. However, other search engines have established local presences there and, as a price of doing so, offer severely restricted information. We have no sales team in China. Regardless, many Chinese Internet users rely on Google. To be fair to China, it never made any explicit demands regarding censoring material. That’s not to say I’m happy about the policies of other portals that have established a presence there.

PLAYBOY: Which sites cooperate with Chinese government censors?

BRIN: I’ve heard various things, but I don’t want to spread secondhand rumors. There is a Harvard site that lists what you can and can’t get from different places around the world.

PAGE: Search for “censorship” and “Berkman” and you can get the website. [Editor’s note: The website is at cyber.law.harvard.edu/home.] It has some cool programs that automatically track what is and isn’t available on the web.

PLAYBOY What would you do if you had to choose between compromising search results and being unavailable to millions of Chinese?

BRIN: There are difficult questions, difficult challenges. Sometimes the “Don’t be evil” policy leads to many discussions about what exactly is evil."

Aside from the fact that was hardly a 'WE SHALL NEVER BOW DOWN TO THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT', you ahve to see the reality. If google.cn didn't exist, all the people that were not looking up whatever the hell is blocked, which is about a 99.9% majority, would not be able to access what they want.
And whether it is blocking extremely racist or child pornographical material, as opposed to democracy is not important. The fact is results are blocked, some websites are not even considered, etc, etc.
Not to mention the old 'what would you do' scenario. I reckon everyone here no matter how tr00 they are would do what google did, whether they believe it, or for the ridiculous amount of money and market share.

[Droogie]

also from a purely economic viewpoint, even if china don't need the money, if they leave out the chinese market another search will take over china. then they could proceed to grow beyond china and become a strong rival to google's global monopoly.

[Gabriel Synthesis]

google are providing a service which people don't have to use if they don't want, if anyone can provide a better service then people will use that

i don't see the problem here

[Forgone Conclusion]

Actauuly, I wasn't talking about an interview with 'playboy', I was talking about another one

And of course it matters whether you are blocking child porn or democracy. What a rediculous thing to say. That's like saying it doesn't matter if you steal a chocolate bar or a shipment of mobile phones - they're both just stealing

Personally, if I owned google, and was as wealthy as it is, I probably wouldn't have given in to the Chinese pressure.

And what do you mean you dont see the problem here? You think it's ok that the chinese government is preventing people see those sites? Like i said, the problem here is stemming from the chinese government, but i also think that google may have made the wrong decision

[Gabriel Synthesis]

the chinese government is preventing people from seeing those sites anyway

what's the harm in google making it easier for the chinese people to access the stuff they are allowed to?

[Echoes]

Quote

Firstly, all results are undergone the first level of filteration for obsene things.

quoted for bollocks

anyways, all i said was that it would have been nice if they had taken a stance, but it's perfectly understandable from every viewpoint other than a moral one.

[The Phlegmy One!111]

Forgone Conclusion, on Jan 26 2006, 11:09 PM, said:

Actauuly, I wasn't talking about an interview with 'playboy', I was talking about another one

And of course it matters whether you are blocking child porn or democracy. What a rediculous thing to say. That's like saying it doesn't matter if you steal a chocolate bar or a shipment of mobile phones - they're both just stealing

Personally, if I owned google, and was as wealthy as it is, I probably wouldn't have given in to the Chinese pressure.

And what do you mean you dont see the problem here? You think it's ok that the chinese government is preventing people see those sites? Like i said, the problem here is stemming from the chinese government, but i also think that google may have made the wrong decision

Well then why don't you link the interview?
In principle, it actually doesn't matter if you steal a chocolate bar or a shipment of mobile phones. And yes, I don't see a problem with this in that what google are doing. I hate it when people think that companies have to take moral high ground, when it's fucking obvious if they do, no-one would follow, and so they'd just end up loosing business. And also, if you don't like a product that is not harming anyone, don't buy it, or in this case use it freely. And yes Bradley, google do have a basic level of filteration, actually not filteration, but a general deleting of sites deemed highly offensive (child pornography mainly) from their database. Not just that, a LOT of the european versions are also censored on KKK stuff, Holocaust stuff, etc.