Blackmoor Vituperative

Web search leader Google Inc. said Tuesday it was introducing a new service for China that seeks to avoid a confrontation with the government by restricting access to services to which users contribute such as e-mail, chat rooms and blogs.

The new Chinese service will offer a censored version of Google’s popular search system that could restrict access to thousands of terms and Web sites.

Hot topics might include issues like independence for Taiwan or Tibet or outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong.

In seeking to compete more aggressively in the world’s second biggest Internet market—where Google has lost ground to a more popular home-grown search company Baidu Inc.—the company is facing the toughest challenge yet to its corporate mantra of “Don’t do evil.”

In a compromise that trades off Google’s desire to provide universal access to information in order to exist within local laws, Google will not offer its Gmail e-mail service, Web log publishing services or chat rooms—tools of self-expression that could be used for political or social protest.

Instead, it said it would initially offer four of its core services—Web site and image search, Google News and local search—while working toward introducing additional services over time. […]

“China is the most repressive censorship regime on the Internet,” said John Palfrey, one of the principal investigators on a joint university research project on global Internet censorship known as the OpenNet Initiative. […]

Google has long offered a full-featured Chinese language version of its Google.com service available to users worldwide and run from computers in its California headquarters.

Company officials said they expect in the coming months to begin running the Google.cn service from facilities within China in order to ensure speedier search results for users in China and to meet local laws governing domestic Web services. […]

In different political circumstances, Google also notifies users of its German, French and U.S. services when it blocks access to material such as banned Nazi sites in Europe.

“In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to local law, regulation or policy,” the company said.

Aware of the trade-offs it is making, Google executives said they believe the company can play a more positive role by participating in the Chinese market, despite restrictions, than by boycotting the country in order to avoid such compromises.

“While removing search results is inconsistent with Google’s mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission,” the company stated.

(Additional reporting by Scott Hillis in San Francisco)

(from eWeek, Google Agrees to Censor Service to Enter China)

Ah, the eternal question: how do you ethically operate an international business when half the known world is controlled by the Evil Empire? We do all know the Chinese government is evil, right? Every bit as evil as the Soviets were, and much more successful, besides? I hope we all know that. It amazes me that we boycott pathetic, impotent evil countries like Cuba, but we smile and suck up to the Evil Empire.

Don’t get me wrong: I do think that U.S. businesses should do business with China, when it’s profitable and ethical for them to do so. But I do not think that they should ever submit to the Chinese government’s demands to become accessories to their evil schemes.

On the other hand, there are probably lots of people who feel the same way about the U.S.A.