Google Hypocrisy - Microsoft is Bad for the Internet?
March 17, 2008 · By Greg Farries
Google’s Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, had this to say about Microsoft’s attempts to acquire Internet giant, Yahoo:
“We would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft,” Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told reporters.
“We would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the Internet, but I doubt it would be.”
Which is pretty laughable coming from anyone who cooperates with Chinese censors to limit freedom of speech in China in exchange for access to the lucrative Chinese market.
Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country’s free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet’s fastest growing market.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company planned to roll out a new version of its search engine bearing China’s Web suffix “.cn,” on Wednesday. A Chinese-language version of Google’s search engine has previously been available through the company’s dot-com address in the United States.
By creating a unique address for China, Google hopes to make its search engine more widely available and easier to use in the world’s most populous country.
Schmidt isn’t worried for the Internet, he’s worried about the potential for loss of market-share…
When multinationals do business in Canada, we rightfully expect them to adhere to our laws. The very thought that an American firm might break our laws to appease a higher ‘moral right’ they believe in would be abhorrent to most Canadians, especially if we disagree with this higher morality.
The Chinese government censors its people, not Google. Google’s choice in the matter was a) censor, and do business in China, or b) don’t censor, and don’t do business in China.
Google may diplomatically press the issue, or encourage the American government to do so on its behalf, but at the end of the day they are still a business, and they have to adhere to Chinese law to do business in China.
Whether or not Google does business in China, it makes no difference to the end user in China. When they search the web, they will be using a censored search engine, be it Google or Baidu. At least this way, Google has some presence and standing in China, and can try to change things from the inside, intead of from the outside looking in.