Google, China: One China, Two Googles, How Many Deals -5

–continued from Google, China: One China, Two Googles, How Many Deals–Page 4

DO NO EVIL

In
Corporate Information: Our Philosophy, Google outlines “Ten things we know to be true”. The page then goes on to say, “As we keep looking towards the future, these core principles guide our actions.”

Number six is the admirable ” You can make money without doing evil.”

“The need for information crosses all borders,” is the equally admirable eighth on the Google list.

Number one is “Focus on the user and all else will follow.”

But, when it comes to Google’s treatment of its Chinese users, are these basic Google tenets just words? Critics have called Google’s Chinese censorship “evil”. So when it comes to China, it seems that Google can’t make make money without doing evil.

Or as much money as they could make.

China is a large Internet market: it’s 335 million users and growing–and it outnumbers a largely static U.S. market.

But Google has achieved its market share in the Chinese market by becoming an experience for Chinese users that, by its own admission, “its not proud of”.

Loss of transparency and censorship are part of that experience. So is portraying 23 million Taiwanese as part of the mainland to the rest of the world.

After four years of operations in Communist China, is Google any closer to its stated intentions “to change that”?

Who has changed more in the bargain: the Communist Chinese leadership–or Google?

ONE FINAL POINT

From The Challenge of Freedom:

“The image of a lone, unarmed man standing against a line of tanks in Tienanmen Square hangs proudly in the gallery of Western memory, but it is virtually unknown to the people of China, its rightful owners.”

After four years of organizing information in mainland China, that the singular image from Tiananmen is still largely unknown to the people of China is a result of the country’s repressive Communist leadership–with Google’s compliance.

by Mondo Frazier
images: Google; DBKP file

NOTE: Speaking of transparency, or a lack there of, Google has recently taken fire for it’s advocacy of “openness”–for everyone else but itself–as well as playing politics on the net neutrality issue. But that’s another issue, another article, another day.

Google, China: One China, Two Googles, How Many Deals -page 5
Google, China: One China, Two Googles, How Many Deals -page 4
Google, China: One China, Two Googles, How Many Deals -page 3
Google, China: One China, Two Googles, How Many Deals -page 2
Google, China: One China, Two Googles, How Many Deals -page 1

UPDATE – Jan 4 2010:
Heady Internet freedom in China as Great Firewall falls — briefly