When Google became Google corp., it adopted a motto: “do no evil.” Well, I was hoping it would last as long as possible. And it did, for quite a few years. However, Google became a publicly tradable company, and when that happened I knew that it was only a matter of time before it became “evil.”
Oh sure, they made billions because of their IPO. But their focus on ethics was lost, it was now on satisfying its investors. And investors don’t care about ethics, they care about money. In fact, I sometime joke that if the US of A were a publicly tradable company, its investors would (ironically) vote it facist to make a few extra bucks.
Because of this, however, Google has made a decision that uncategorically makes it evil: it will now censor its results in China. And who can blame the investors: it was that or potentially loose access to the millions of chinese web surfers. That could have hurt their investment.
So we, we who are so upset about a government that spies on us, help put forth massive censorship in a distant land. I once heard a quote “Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.” It remains true, but money is power, and so it can be said that “Absolute Money Corrupts Absolutely.” Who seeks “absolute money”? Investors. And they’re corrupt because of it.
It isn’t really anti-capitalist to frown upon this system we have whereby companies are afraid of decisions because of the fears of the ignorant market that supports it. Then again, Google might of made this decision, as a company, reguardless.
It’s a mess. I’m just ashamed that its because of investors that politically charged youth are given 10 year jail sentences (in China; thanks to Yahoo), and that the people of a distant country are given a false truth of the world, fed to them by American companies.
For shame. Who are we to say we support freedom when the companies beneath us promote censorship and help jail political dissidents.
Update: I tested out the new Google.cn. “tiananmen square” in the standard Google-US search reveals 1,600,000 results; including Wikipedia references, BBC’s and CNN’s revisited perspective on the massacre, and history websites. Google-China has 13,000 results, with all references to the massacre erased.
People are getting upset over here because the government is demanding search results from Google. Google is refusing to hand them over, citing “…their demand for information overreaches.” Yet this is the same company that’s sharing all its information with Chinese officials to better censor their results. Now why are they hypocrites? Because of investors, who as much as they don’t give a damn about foreign users, cry outloud whenever their lives are mildly inconvenienced.