Thursday 14 January 2010

Google Shrugged

From Liberty Scott:

Google says no to the Communist Party of China
    “. . .  the announcement by Google that it will pull out of China unless it can provide a free open uncensored service is astonishing. It has justified it on the grounds that there have been hacking attempts at Gmail accounts from China, and presumably it has little recourse to the Chinese authorities to prosecute this. However, it is a brave move in the country that has now got the largest number of internet users in the world.
    “Google has apparently stopped censoring google.cn, which must be causing great angst amongst the Chinese government and the Communist Party. Previously censored articles and images of Tiananmen Square, critiques of Mao Tse Tung and support for Chinese dissidents, Taiwan and indeed much porn will now be easily accessible.
    “More important than that, Google has let all users in China know of its policy. It has called upon the 300 million or so Chinese internet users to note what their government is doing . . .   kudos to Google. It [has] declared its hand as being the search engine for a free world, it [has] shown how a private company can frighten the world's largest authoritarian government . . .”

Go Google.  Perhaps they’ve learned something from last year’s Tea Parties about saying “no” to government goons?

1 comment:

ZenTiger said...

Your title was along my first thoughts - Google giving China the shrug off.

I'd like to see Microsoft withdraw Windows from sale in Europe. Might please Ayn Rand (aside from the fact she is dead) and would certainly please the penguin movement.