Google seeks to draw a line in the sand

Financial Times: 

For Google, China is “truly immaterial”, says a spokesperson for the company. At least, that is, when it comes to its direct business significance.

But in terms of its broader political ramifications and the internal soul-searching it has caused, Google’s involvement with China has been responsible for some of the hardest decisions the young company has faced.

Late on Tuesday, Google finally drew a line in the sand. By declaring it will no longer censor results on Google.cn, the world’s biggest internet company has set in train a confrontation with the Chinese authorities that could well lead to the closure of its local search service.

Online advertising market share in China
Search engine	2009 Q4 (%)
Baidu	58.40
Google.cn	35.60
Sougou	1
SoSo	0.70
zhongsou.com	0.60
Netease youdao	0.40
Others	3.20
Source: Analysys

In a blog post explaining its move, Google said that “over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search service within the law, if at all.” It added: “We recognise that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

If so, it would mark a dramatic retreat over a point of principle that has long bedevilled the company.

Four years ago, its agreement to censor search results in return for being allowed to run a local service in China drew fierce criticism from human rights groups and anti-China hawks.

“Google has always been haunted by the spectre of Yahoo handing over material that helped put a Chinese dissident in prison,” said Dan Brody, the first employee Google hired in China and now chief executive of Koolanoo Group, a China-focused internet company.

Yahoo handed over email records in 2004 that were used by the Chinese government to imprison journalist and dissident Shi Tao. The emails Mr Shi sent to overseas human rights groups using his Yahoo account documented orders from the government to the publication where he worked on how to censor coverage of the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail for “illegally providing state secrets overseas”.

Google argued internally that while censoring was an unpalatable compromise, it would at least make it possible to open up more of the web to Chinese internet users. But the decision was unpopular with many members of Google’s rank and file and never sat comfortably in particular with co-founder Sergey Brin, whose own family’s hardships in the former Soviet Union had heightened his sensitivity to human rights issues

Posted via email from Jim Nichols