

Google Bows Down To Chinese Government On Censorship - percyalpha
https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2013/jan/google-bows-down-chinese-government-censorship

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leephillips
The author has a naive view of Google and their relationship to censorship,
because he is unfamiliar with the relevant history. Therefore he paints the
appeasement of China as some kind of departure, when in fact it is in line
with Google's ready acquiescence to demands for censorship, from, for example,
the Pakistani government and random Muslim groups[1]. Google's self-censorship
in these and other cases affect their results delivered world-wide, including
in the U.S., not merely in the totalitarian countries that complain.

[1]<http://lee-phillips.org/youtube/>

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SoftwareMaven
I don't think the author's conclusion necessarily flows from the facts. Going
back to the hypothesis that it was too difficult to maintain so they pulled it
seems just as likely. The argument that pulling down the help page is the
smoking gun is just false. If they pulled the feature, _of course_ they'd pull
the documentation.

Alternatively, google may have pulled it to keep China from axing them
completely so other Chinese citizens could keep using https/gmail/etc and not
get censored, pretty much the opposite conclusion.

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percyalpha
Google used two ways to implement the function. One is external linking to js
file which could be easily blocked, another is embedding, which couldn't be
block(and Google knew it). When we wrote this article, they switched from
embedding back to external linking perhaps to make the function easily
blockable.

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hoi
To do business in a country other than your own requires yo to comply with the
laws of that country even if they are incongruent to your own beliefs. Your
alternative option is to not do business there. The main issue we have is that
the values of the company (in this case, Google) is mostly an American
cultural ideal, which will not necessarily flow smoothly with all the
differences in culture from the many countries out there.

For some people, they argue that cultural imperialism is spread using this
method rather than the old methods of colonization.

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shimon_e
Google being non-existent in China is far greater censorship than the keywords
the Chinese government wants to censor.

Having Google in China gives the Chinese a taste of the west. Which ultimately
in our benefit. China has come a long way from the 100% communist era. If they
are capable of change themselves we don't need to interfere IMO.

~~~
schuke
Quite true. With censorship we used to have 99% of Google, now without
censorship we have 0%. Not saying that 1% isn't important, but it wouldn't
outweigh the rest.

