News - China tells Google to comply or else

[HEXUS]

Its IT minister sent out a warning that it will have to pay the consequences if it breaks Chinese law.

Read more.

[aidanjt]

Love Google's selective ethical standards. Invasion of privacy == ok (unless it's someone outside their company). Restricting search results != ok? Charming.

[TooNice]

I am not surprised about China's statement, in fact, I am surprised that they took so long to publicly say it. Not that I agree with them, but I don't recall the last time the Chinese government negotiated terms. They set the term no matter who they are dealing with, and it's take it or leave it (and everyone want a piece of Chinese pie).

[kalniel]

Love Google's selective ethical standards. Invasion of privacy == ok (unless it's someone outside their company). Restricting search results != ok? Charming.

Well to be fair, it was an invasion of privacy that kicked this whole thing off in the first place. The restricting of search results was fine before but google threatened to stop it in response to the hacks.

[aidanjt]

Yeah, it just looks like nothing more than a power play to me. Google is big enough to have things the Chinese government needs, at the very least popularity, already filtered and proven search, and so forth. And China provides Google with 1 billion potential adsense eyeballs. So really, all this gabbing is futile because they will come to some arrangement.

It just annoys the hell out of me when they pretend they're talking about doing this on ethical grounds. If they had ethics they wouldn't have done the censorship in the first place, or turn all their users of every app/service into nice, neat, data packaged money pouches.

[matty-hodgson]

Why do they even need to censor their searches?

[arthurleung]

Yeah, it just looks like nothing more than a power play to me. Google is big enough to have things the Chinese government needs, at the very least popularity, already filtered and proven search, and so forth. And China provides Google with 1 billion potential adsense eyeballs. So really, all this gabbing is futile because they will come to some arrangement.

It just annoys the hell out of me when they pretend they're talking about doing this on ethical grounds. If they had ethics they wouldn't have done the censorship in the first place, or turn all their users of every app/service into nice, neat, data packaged money pouches.

The Chinese already got Baidu. To the Chinese government Google is not a necessity, nor is many Chinese users.

The move by Google to uncensor results attract people from the other search engines. Really I think Google is just using the attack to justify breaking the local law.

[aidanjt]

Baidu is no Google. Anyway, neither party can claim the moral high ground and that's basically my point.

[TooNice]

Baidu is no Google.

And that may well be why it (Baidu) is the leading search engine in China. And not by an insignificant margin (similar to nVidia:AMD in discrete graphics card, or Intel:AMD in the CPU market). But even if it was the other way round, I doubt the Chinese government would bow to any pressure.

[DataMatrix]

Why do they even need to censor their searches?

Because they have a communistic-style social structure.

[Nick259]

They are at it again :/

[Zhaoman]

Why do they even need to censor their searches?

It's for propaganda and social order. If the common masses found out half the stuff the government was doing then there would be unrest. Propaganda keeps the country running smoothly and everyone is proud of their country and government who seems to do no wrong You wouldn't want Google to destroy that delicate balance now would you...

[TooNice]

No doubt that the censorship is there in part to maintain social and political control, but it is worth noting that the PRC is far from being the only country where Google censorship takes place (in fact, you don't need to look far): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google