Google and its fancy-pants “philosophy” meet Chinese Communism
From the founders’ letter in the S-1 of Google’s IPO:
DON’T BE EVIL
Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company….MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE
We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place. In pursuing this goal, we will always be mindful of our responsibilities to our shareholders, employees, customers and business partners. With our products, Google connects people and information all around the world for free. We are adding other powerful services such as Gmail, which provides an efficient one gigabyte Gmail account for free.
From the Company’s website in the section called Our Philosophy:
4. Democracy on the web works….
6. You can make money without doing evil.
From the real world, via Reuters:
Web search leader Google Inc. said on Tuesday that it was introducing a new service for China that seeks to avoid a confrontation with the government by restricting access to services to which users contribute such as e-mail, chat rooms and blogs. The new Chinese service at http://www.google.cn will offer a self-censored version of Google’s popular search system that restricts access to thousands of terms and Web sites….In a compromise that trades off Google’s desire to provide universal access to information in order to exist within local laws, Google will not offer its Gmail e-mail service, Web log publishing services or chat rooms — tools of self-expression that could be used for political or social protest.
Commentary
We understand well that running a business in the real world entails making all sorts of compromises, and sometimes involves doing business in countries whose values we do not share. But we would like to be spared the moralistic claptrap that has come out of the billionaires at Google. Perhaps after being spanked by China they will do us all the honor of shutting their pie holes.
UPDATE
They have not shut their pie holes, and it turns out that is good news, because it lets us see more of who these people are. Google co-founder Sergey Brin had this charming comment on Google’s censorship decision, via Reuters:
“France and Germany require censorship for Nazi sites, and the U.S. requires censorship based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA). These various countries also have laws on child pornography…”
You know, man, freedom or Taiwan independence or Falun Gong — why, that’s just like the Nazis or child porn, man. Charming, indeed. We can’t wait for the next lecture on morality from Mr. Brin.
UPDATE II
The following is no longer operative, via Say Anything:
January 25th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Interesting response to the issue. I ‘m under the impression that Google wasn’t quite as far left as say CHina, but it leans a tad too much to the left. Try dogpile if you can.
I confess to having a hard time leaving those great Googlo satellite maps alone though.
January 25th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
it’s time for……
a Google stock divestment campaign.Everyone who cares about the free-flow of information, about democracy in China, in fact about democracy anywhere, should start selling their Google stock. This should begin most especially with those vast university endowments because academic institutions, of all places, should be most concerned with the censorship of ideas and information. Union pension plans as well should seek to divest as their members should be particularly appalled by the company’s restrictive behavior. I could go on, but you certainly get the point. I welcome suggestions for how to mount this campaign in the comments below.(Full disclosure: I do not own any Google stock, but would, I’m assuming, have the courage of my convictions, if I did.)
Click here: Roger L. Simon: What to do about the new Axis of Evil?
Problem with Roger’s suggestion is that “academentia”
likes socialism – so capitalism in support of socialism is
a dream come true for them. They’ll buy more.