News Feature

China Censorship: Google and Other Scoundrels

January 30, 2006 — CIO —

by Constantine von Hoffman

On NPR the other day, I was listening to some or the other executive at Ford explain about how his company had come to have to lay off tens of thousands of workers, lose more than a billion dollars and no longer have the No. 1 selling car in the US. One of his reasons: No one thought the price of gas would go up to $2.50-$3 a gallon. While the NPR interviewer (motto: We Make Larry King Look Tough) let this statement sail by with nary a comment, I quite literally sputtered at the radio. There are only two possible explanations for this statement. One is that the people running Ford are so stupid that they could not foresee the fact that commodity prices fluctuate and that yes, the Middle East is indeed a volatile part of the world. Two is that they’re lying and didn’t feel it would be politic to say, “Look our profit margins on these SUVs were so huge that we figured it we should make all we could right now and never mind what comes next. Hey, y’all we’re dumb enough to buy them …” It is never a good thing when the most you can hope for is that you are being lied to.

What does all this have to do with Google, you ask? For what it’s worth, when justifying their decision to get in bed with the Chinese government they just came out and said: It’s all about the money. The market is too huge for us to ignore.

They have even stopped claiming not to censor search results. Now their web page reads

It is Google’s policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so.

Let us have then a big cheer for honesty! And why shouldn’t they tell the truth?The fact of the matter is, there is no real practical reason for them not to go along with China’s requirements. No company – be it internet/tech giants like Yahoo! or Microsoft or all the bazillions of firms that do their manufacturing there – have gotten into trouble with the consumers here for sucking up to Beijing, just as no company (speaking of Ford) got into any real trouble for doing business with the Nazis.

Over at the BBC, Bill Thompson argues that Google could actually have gotten into legal trouble if it had not given in to the Chinese demands for censorship. He says that it could have been seen as a betrayal of fiduciary responsibility: