Shastrix Blogs

I don't think Google has done anything wrong here - their motto of 'do no evil' still stands. I can't see how providing a service, albeit in a censored form to a neglected 1/6th of the world's population is supporting that particular regime. MSN, and Yahoo! already provide censored search engines in China; and Microsoft, as well as many other large companies jump through the legal hoops to allow their product/service to be sold/used in China.

Google is all about the free sharing of information; by allowing the Chinese access to its search engine, it is still allowing them to access more information than they have before; especially considering the methods in place to block information are not perfect. There is nothing ‘shady’ about this move; unlike the other search engines, they are going to inform their users when some of the results are being censored for legal reasons. In my opinion, it is far better to know what you are missing out on and why, rather than not know that you are being censored at all. This alone is a positive step that may in future lead the Chinese to question their oppressive freedom laws. In addition, the blogs and gmail services will not be included in China to prevent the government from requesting user’s private information; hardly an action of a morally-corrupt company.

I don't think anybody can deny that money is an issue here; Google has shareholders now, and shareholders will most probably frown upon Google taking the 'moral high ground' and turning its back on one of fastest growing economies in the world. Here in the UK you perhaps should be worried about the censoring of information. Afterall, Google has been censoring its French and German search results for a while now to comply with the legal requirements in each country.

So instead of fussing over a company towing the line, with the potential to make a difference in the long term; how about worry about more pressing issues such as Iran blocking the Persian language version of the BBC from within their country.