Sunday, January 29, 2006

Googling

Its quite interesting to see the current uproar against google for censoring its search results in return for being allowed in china. In a purely practical sense google is of course correct. The Chinese government suppresses information anyway (the great firewall of china), you can atleast make a buck this way. In idealistic terms this is a sellout. Especially after google took the moral high ground when the US government asked for its data. I remember msn took a lot of heat when it censored subject lines in msn spaces. What is right? Obviously telling the Chinese government to take a hike. China has a lot of smart people . Hopefully they’ll find a way to access the information they need.
Is it that easy? Obviously not.
Id guess id be much more comfortable if google cooperated with the us government and refused to do so with the Chinese government. Googles motto is Don’t be evil. Perhaps it is time to change that to Be Good.