Google Bows to Beijing

(San Francisco) When Google opened a research office in Beijing last year, the obvious purpose was to convince the communist government that the company could adequately deny Chinese citizens access to information. Well, guess what? Google succeeded.

From Reuters:

"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," Andrew McLaughlin, Google's senior policy counsel, said in a statement.

"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."

Google, known for its "Don't do evil" mantra, is developing its China approach as it seeks to strike a balance between the freedom of information it champions and the censorship demanded by Beijing, which controls access to China's 111 million Internet users.

John Palfrey, an Internet censorship investigator, estimated that tens of thousands of search terms will be blocked to Chinese Web users. However, according to Rebecca MacKinnon of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, if the average Chinese user is adequately informed of the censorship, "That is defiantly a significant step toward transparency and honesty with the users." I think MacKinnon is justifying Google censorship in China by indicating it's a "foot in the door."

One question that hasn't been answered thus far is whether Google will be providing information to the government about the users who search for censored information. Google has refused to comply with a similar request from the U.S. government.

Notably, Google will not offer email or blogging services until it can figure out how to strike a "balance between user interests and local conditions." Whatever that means.

Companion post at The Jawa Report.