If Google is returning under the same terms it exited, it could be a sign of 'shift in principles' for the search giant. It could mean Google is OK with censorship, as long as it is allowed to make money. This is a departure from Google's 'Do no evil' mantra and it could be a sign that the company is becoming more like any other standard company; aimed at maximizing shareholder value and nothing else. Maybe it already was, but there is no pretense anymore.
The fact that these censorship laws come from countries which are called "democratic" doesn't mean that we should suddenly change the definition of the word.
Here'a a Wikipedia article about Google's censorship:
I think there needs to be a bit more flesh on the term "censorship" or we risk making everything appear the same and shrug it off as normal.
In my view it makes sense to distinguish at least these forms of censorship:
a) Censorship with the purpose of keeping the rulers of a country in power by suppressing criticism of their work or themselves.
b) Censorship that attempts to enforce some culture specific definition of decency, often oppressing sexual minorities, atheists or religious minorities.
c) Censorship that is meant to enforce copyrights and other private interests like reputation or credit standing.
d) Censorship to support legitimate work of the police, the courts and the security services that does not in effect amount to (a).
I think it's important to acknowledge that (a) dominates all other forms of censorship because it prevents the democratic process that will shape the laws governing all other forms of censorship.
That is why in my opinion Google should not bow to demands of censorship in the sense of (a) but should keep working in countries where it has to cooperate with all other forms of censorship, even though the direct effects of (b) and (d) are sometimes worse than (a).
If Google were to exit a market for (c) that'd mean there's be no Google or YouTube in the US. I don't like censorship by an autocratic government either but we are moving to treating corps that are lazy/careless with users' information as victims at home too.
> The disclosure of that data is a violation of the Communications Act, as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which requires network operators to protect customer information. "Congress and the Commission have made clear that cable operators such as Cox must 'take such actions as are necessary to prevent unauthorized access to such information by a person other than the subscriber or cable operator,'" Travis LeBlanc, the chief of the FCC's Enforcement Bureau, wrote in an order filed November 5. "Furthermore, telecommunications carriers such as Cox must take 'every reasonable precaution' to protect their customers’ data. In addition, the law requires carriers to promptly disclose CPNI breaches via our reporting portal within seven business days after reasonable determination of a breach to facilitate the investigations of the FBI and the United States Secret Service."
Will cox get immunity from prosecution on things like this under cisa?
Google should push for protection of their users data from dragnet type surveillance in China but when we can't trust dedicated fiber optic cables connecting data centers here in the US, we really don't have anything to stand on. It is all very sad.
It's sad that it may have been Europe of all places that thought Google it should be okay with censorship. Once that happened, it was only a step forward for Google to think "well, I guess we're only complying with the local laws here...so we could do that in China, too."
It's a cop-out from Google, and from any other company that has agreed with this (Microsoft, Apple, etc).
You started this comment as a hypothetical, but finished it with certainty. I don't think you're being intentionally disingenuous but I wanted to point out that your comment's conclusion relies completely on "[i]f Google is returning under the same terms it exited...".
I don't think it's really that easy. Pulling out of China didn't prevent any evil, it just moved it to Baidu. Would the world have been a slightly-less-censored place if Google had stuck it out in China, filtered some results, and pushed back in others? I think probably yes.
Either way, having more competition between search engines in China couldn't possibly reduce information flow. Maybe this will make it more likely people can find banned content one way or the other. Turns out China can live without Google, and they need a plan B.
Thankfully (for Google), that phrase is completely vapid and meaningless.
Also thankfully (for Google), self-enforced codes of conduct are vapid and meaningless.
Edit (in an effort to be more constructive): I think it's important to distinguish corporate posturing from actual, meaningful intent. I see no reason to consider Google's CoC as anything but the former.
I had the same views as many people here before. That Google returning to China is abandoning its principles. But seeing how my friends and family suffer with Baidu, I wonder, what exactly "Do no evil" by not cooperating with Chinese government is good for? It does not in any way boost human rights or freedom in China, and the only tangible result is that ordinary Chinese citizens are suffering even more because of lack of access to a better search engine. Exiting China does more "evil" than returning to it, at least from a utilitarian perspective.
The chinese governement will have to change their policies at some point anyway.
Having the great firewall is as a side-effect hurting a lot the tech companies, no-one is actualy outsourcing tech to China. If you compare with India, the difference is massive. I can only think of one chinese tech company who succeeded internationally (AppAnnie), all the others I can think of are just copies of tech companies for the local market. At some point, they will have to choose between having great technology companies and keeping the firewall in place. The more they wait, the harder the choice is going to be for them.
I am pessimistic about this. The NSA fiasco hurts the interests of many American tech businesses, especially those operating a cloud, but you don't see any signs of US government changing their mind on surveillance. At least in the United States, money can influence politics. Yet the tech companies fail to change anything. In China, the power is inverted: politics control money. If censorship is good for the party but bad for business, then business just have to work with that.
China has amazing technology companies though, a fairly unique market when it comes to how the internet is used and a market that is so ridiculously large that any company just operating in China can do very well.
Just take a look at WeChat which is practically replacing the Web in China. They are clearly years ahead of Facebook.
The chinese government may have to change policies at some point but there is no reason to believe that this is something that has to happen anytime soon, certainly not within the next few years, probably not even within a decade.
You're assuming that Baidu's faults are somehow because the people running Baidu are simply not as skilled as Google, and I doubt this. If Google was running in China, I doubt it would be that much better than Baidu. The censorship obviously degrades the quality of search results, and China does other things which make running web services intrinsically difficult, especially if you're trying to keep to Western principles in any way.
Could you elaborate on how they suffer with Baidu? I've found it to be top-notch and better than Google for the normal searches made in China. I generally make it my default while there even when using a VPN.
Here's one long running anecdote. I've been operating a self-published book site for over five years. All Chinese content. Some of the books are banned in China. Much of the content no China online publisher will touch.
Baidu loves my site. Searches are often in the top three results on Baidu. I have no ads and pay Baidu nothing. Don't even help them find my site. Baidu even runs its own book site and gives my site plenty of love. To my knowledge the site has never been blocked by the GFW.
Google barely knows I exist even though I follow all their webmaster rules. I'm not sure if its because of low page rank or Google not being great at Chinese content.
I suppose my point is page rank isn't the only way to go or at least having a strong reliance on page rank may leave out unique or rare content that isn't marketed (quality inbound links) heavily.
As a foreigner living in China and who can't read Chinese, Baidu is close to useless. There's always Bing but Google gives much superior results for the types of searches I do. That being said, the vast majority of Chinese don't "suffer" from Baidu and wouldn't switch to Google if it came back.
I am glad Google is going to launch Play Store in China. As an Android developer, here is what is happening:
"Chinese developers can sell in China and Rest of the world. Rest of the World find it near impossible to launch services for Chinese customers."
I am sure having Google Play Store in China provides a Path to launch Apps in China for Developers outside china.
It's wrong to capitalize every noun in an English sentence. The only words that need capitalization are 'proper nouns' (eg, names of countries, companies, places etc), and the first letter at the start of a sentence.
I guess this was because of the whole "right to be forgotten" fiasco. Afterwards, I image they said: "What the hell, we are already doing arbitrary censorship, lets go back to China"
I was under the impression it was really about China sponsoring hacking and espionage against Google and then turning around and giving the spoils of that to its competitors native to China. I imagine they now feel that they can successfully defend against attacks and compartmentalize Chinese operations. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they kept all "secret sauce" code out of China altogether.
Yeah, everyone keeps mentioning the whole "evil" aspect, but I was fairly sure google left due to the many, many attacks on it by Chinese hackers (who they believed to be the Chinese government) attempting and successfully stealing their source code: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/03/china-google-idUSN...
I've seen a couple talks by Google employees that support a massive change internally towards how they view security because of it. Besides the pressure to use Mac or Linux for workstations they also decided to just get rid of the concept of a "perimeter" for their corporate network entirely. No squishy inside if there's no inside.
It's a little more nuanced. It seems that only Google Play is going into China - not Google search. Wouldn't Google make more money by allowing their search engine to be censored in China? Isn't this a continuing, if limited, example good-evil considerations in business?
Google never left China to be exact, although google.com.cn is currently a symlink to google.com.hk, which its internet governance is under HK's Common Law. One may argue that HK is under China's governance, but I have not seen anyone complaining about Internet censorship (political correctness is a different thing).
I too like symlink as a useful general purpose reference point that's more specific than pointer. In this case though it's a bit dissonant since there is a direct analog in the domain of DNS (cname). Thanks for the clarification!
"Each Alphabet business could now make its own decision about where it operated"
AKA...some units are harder up for cash than others, and can decide to pick and choose principles a la carte.
At the very least, a return will raise some eyebrows? I assume if they do plan on returning it means they are either abandoning their ideals of "do no evil", or else the Chinese government has changed their ways? I find the later highly unlikely.
And the comment about "Google never left China". There was a lot of PR and noise when they left so this comment just baffles me and really makes me think ill when people pick and choose words and play with semantics.
Google is doing fine without China. Doing business in China will create dependencies/risks that once established could be difficult for Google to turn back. I just don't know if it's worth it.
