You’ve probably heard by now about how Google, in retaliation to unauthorized intrusion into Gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents by what they believe is the Chinese government, Google has decided to stop working with the Chinese government and stop filtering the Google search results for google.cn, which could lead to pulling out of China completely.
The last time anyone as big and influential as Google had to pull out of China due to pressure from the communist government, they formed Taiwan.
It’s becoming such a huge deal that the U.S. State Department is getting involved. Hopefully this won’t escalate into full-out nuclear warfare between the two countries. At least not till January 26th, when I arrive in nuclear-free New Zealand. Although that’s not likely to happen, considering that the United States owes China so much money that China can’t afford to have us default on the loans…
Google’s official blog tells their side of the story.
We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”
These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
What lessons can we gain for network performance from this debacle? Simply this: Don’t get into business agreements that compromise your business ethics for the sake of some temporary reassurances of safety. Or in other words, if the people you’re dealing with seem to be making unreasonable demands, chances are they’ll commit unreasonable acts in the future.
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