Wednesday, January 25, 2006

You can't read this in China

In my travels across the country I've seen a multitude of different ads for Budweiser and other beers. In New York, Bud is a Giants fan, in Phili, it roots for the Eagels, and when I'm on the west coast, all of a sudden, they've been die hard Raiders fans since the team was created. Do they think I'm not seeing these other signs? Do they think they're getting away with some sort of faux-sincerity to win my heart over?

If you type my name in Google.com, this blog is what comes up. But I am willing to bet it will not come up if you search it from Google.cn.
Now that Google is relaunching it's efforts in China and creating google.cn they have agreed to China's demands of censoring any information not deemed suitable. This includes things like Tianamen Square, certain civil rights sites and so on. Before, if a Chinese person could get access to Google's American site he would be able to search for anything and the Chinese government would filter out the sites. Page titles would come back, but none of them would be accessible. Google has now decided to filter itself, deciding which words to flag and which to let go only to have the Chinese government call them if they feel they're being too lax. Now the "bad" sites don't even appear, just a notice saying some sites were deleted.

Does Google think I'm not going to notice they conveniently are leaving American values on America's shores? Does Google think that WE are not going to notice?

As of today Google's mantra, "Do no evil," is hypocritical.

Yahoo and Microsoft have already kowtowed to China's demands to get access to their rapidly growing economy. This internet big three could easily team together and demand certain rights that they're not even asking for now, but they capitulate and they collect their money. If Yahoo is going to keep handing over sensitive documents to the Chinese government like the ones they handed over last year that put a NYTimes reporter in Chinese jail for exposing Chinese corruption, I don't think any pact will be happening soon.

Google says it's not offering it's easily searchable gmail or it's blogs (this blog service in fact) because that censoring would be going to far. They've already gone too far. And I hope China does see this, and reads it, before it sensors it.

Yes, I'm still going to use they're search engine, and their blog service, and their email. But there are other ways to have my voice heard than a boycott and I plan on using them. I hope you do too.

3 Comments:

At 3:01 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

mantra, not montra.

but i'm sure it's a typo, since A and O are so close on the keyboard.

 
At 6:45 AM, Blogger Jaime Schwarz said...

thanks mr. anominous for your thoughtful criticism

 
At 1:09 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

criticism is a bit harsh. i'd call it help.

 

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