The fact Belgian newspapers want it to be harder to find the content they put on the internet is weird (why bother having an on-line presence at all then?), the fact they went to court to force Google to stop driving traffic to their sites is bizarre, the fact a Belgian court found against Google is insane.

[permanent link] (shoot the breeze)

Google is making a lot of waves in the headlines lately. For good reason, it has refused a Justice Department demand to hand over the records of millions of searches to the government. The information would have revealed tons of data about Google users, perhaps a bit more than we want to share. It was a good publicity stunt, as Microsoft and Yahoo had given in immediately. I know I was happy with it; I don’t want to the government prying into my and millions of others’ privacy just so that it can theoretically nab a couple of criminals. Score one for them.

But now a new controversy is emerging. Google has just announced that it will be starting operations in China, a growing superpower with no limits on how far it will go to suppress information. Apparently that’s something that Google and Microsoft can agree with, because Google gave the OK to self-censor thousands of terms and web sites, including blog services. Microsoft has been notorious for its censorship of dissident voices, along with terms like “democracy” and “Tiananmen Square.” In light of the recent spat with the U.S. government, one might think that Google would try challenging the power of governments everywhere who tried to invade upon the rights of its citizens. I guess not.

What we do know at this point is that Google seems to be trying to minimize it's evilness in several ways, according to how their statements describe the service:

1. Google says they will put up a notice at the bottom of the search page informing users when the results have been filtered. To my knowledge, none of their competitors in China are doing this. Therefore, while not escaping evilness, they do get a brownie point for being more transparent and honest with Chinese users than their competition. But to see how big this brownie point should be, we need to look at where that notification is placed on the page and how obvious it is to the user. We also need to see whether the Chinese government tries to get them to remove that notice, and if so whether they hold their ground.

2. They say that they will have a link somewhere on the Google.cn page enabling users to access the U.S.-hosted version at: http://www.google.com/ig?hl=zh-CN. So that Chinese users who prefer can opt for the pre-Google.cn experience. The question is: how prominent will this option be on the page and how well explained will it be? Will it be something that only a very small number of people know to use? Or will it be promoted and clearly explained as an option? Also, what happens if the Chinese netnannies use the existence of Google.cn as an excuse to block the U.S.-hosted Google entirely? That would be very bad. And if that happens, how will Google respond? Will they shrug their shoulders and sigh? Or will they push back?

3. Google says it has opted not to provide any services such as email or blogging services that would require hosting user data inside Chinese jurisdiction. This is a clear choice they have made to avoid having to turn users over to the Chinese police as Yahoo did or to censor bloggers as Microsoft does. Will they stick to this choice or will the lure of business draw them deeper into evilness?

Current Mood: tired
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[permanent link] (3 zephyrs | shoot the breeze)

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: ZARD - セパレート・ウェイズ

[permanent link] (shoot the breeze)