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"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
Sir Winston Churchill

1.27.2007

Well, "Don't Get CAUGHT Being Evil", Perhaps?

Google admits the obvious, but still doesn't get it:

Google's decision to censor its search engine in China was bad for the company, its founders admitted yesterday.

Google, launched in 1998 by two Stanford University dropouts, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was accused of selling out and reneging on its "Don't be evil" motto when it launched in China in 2005. The company modified the version of its search engine in China to exclude controversial topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Falun Gong movement, provoking a backlash in its core western markets.

Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr Brin admitted yesterday: "On a business level, that decision to censor... was a net negative."
The company has only once expressed any regret and never in as strong terms as yesterday. Mr Brin said the company had suffered because of the damage to its reputation in the US and Europe.

Last year in a speech in Washington Mr Brin admitted the company had been forced to compromise its principles to operate in China. At the time, he also hinted at a potential reversal of its stance in the country, saying "perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense".


Easy access to information is a threat to totalitarian regimes. Keeping a population completely ignorant of the world outside allows dictators such as those in Beijing to suppress any and all attempts by oppressed people to rise up and throw off their yokes.

The problem wasn't so much that Google "compromised its principles" as Google actively aided and abetted a Communist regime in controlling its citizenry. They became in effect part of the ChiCom propaganda ministry, and in so doing part of the totalitarian apparatus in China.

THAT'S the problem.

Perhaps a little less Little Red Book in the boardroom and a bit more honor would be in order.

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