Google Collaborating With China’s Repressive Government?

The piece below is about plans by Google to collaborate with China’s repressive government by providing censored search results. The company has flirted with the idea since at least 2006. On one hand, moving into China requires going along with the Chinese government’s repression of its own citizens. On the other hand, even a censored Google search may be better for Chinese citizens than no Google at all. Right?

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LINK: Google plans to launch censored search engine in china, leaked documents reveal (by Ryan Gallagher for The Intercept)

…The planned move represents a dramatic shift in Google’s policy on China and will mark the first time in almost a decade that the internet giant has operated its search engine in the country.

Google’s search service cannot currently be accessed by most internet users in China because it is blocked by the country’s so-called Great Firewall. The app Google is building for China will comply with the country’s strict censorship laws, restricting access to content that Xi Jinping’s Communist Party regime deems unfavorable.

The Chinese government blocks information on the internet about political opponents, free speech, sex, news, and academic studies. It bans websites about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, for instance, and references to “anticommunism” and “dissidents.” Mentions of books that negatively portray authoritarian governments, like George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, have been prohibited on Weibo, a Chinese social media website. The country also censors popular Western social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as American news organizations such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal….

What do you think?

See also, from the Business Ethics Blog (2006) “Google on Google in China”

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