Google's founding principles fall at great firewall of China John Naughton Sunday January 29, 2006 The Observer The only thing that was surprising about Google's decision to self-censor its China-based service was that people were surprised by it. In the general media coverage, there were many gleeful references to the company's motto - boasted of in the preface to its IPO prospectus - of 'Don't Be Evil' (a phrase which, at the time, caused Wall Street investment bankers to lie down in darkened rooms). ...The Chinese arms of Yahoo and Microsoft had already bent the knee to the local political overlords - Yahoo by handing over personal details of a user to the security authorities, Microsoft by suppressing the blog of a dissenting intellectual. ..It was difficult to decide which was more nauseating - the decision itself or the attempts by the Googlefolk to rationalise it. The argument essayed by co-founder Sergey Brin - essentially that some information is better than none - is simply pathetic. The truth is that when faced with the first really hard moral choice of their young lives, the Google boys copped out. ...Google's capitulation to the Chinese regime prompts some sobering thoughts. One is that while one may occasionally be justified in trusting an individual, one can never, ever place the same kind of trust in a company. That's why all the current concern about 'corporate social responsibility' is ultimately just eyewash. ...Already, it holds the email archives of millions of subscribers to Google Mail, plus records of every web search they ever made. And although it is resisting the attempt of the US government to mount a fishing expedition through those data, nobody doubts that, in the end, Google will comply with the law. ...By joining the Gadarene rush into the Chinese market, Google may have gained short-term advantage. But it has also forfeited its right to our trust. john.naughton@observer.co.uk ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen@leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]