Google appears to drop censorship in China
“BEIJING - Web sites dealing with subjects such as the Tiananmen Square democracy protests, Tibet and regional independence movements could all be accessed through Google’s Chinese search engine Tuesday, after the company said it would no longer abide by Beijing’s censorship rules.”
This was due to recent terrorism attacks aimed at google founded in China correct?
It’s good for google to take some action for this :). I heard about google proposing this, although I didn’t think they would actually go through with it.
I never understood why Google willingly participated in such a practice to start with. Why voluntarily help a government as corrupt and wrong as China’s?
Because China has so many people in it, not supporting such a large user base with their own government regulations would be a foolish business decision 
I think we have enough trouble with governments trying to rewrite history, and additional censorship only worsens this. It’s one thing to fear counter culture, but it is that counter culture that tells you what is wrong in society and how to fix it. The message may not always be clear, but its there if you look closely enough.
Now we just need to wait until the end of the month to see whether Google renew the google.cn domain and whether if they try to that China actually allows it. That they have dropped censorship now makes the rumours that they are actually going to let the domain drop slightly more believable
Commercial activity do not conflict with a local government laws, Google’s search results that contain some content can not be tolerated by chinese govment, so google Or censoring search results, or opt-out, Google must comply with rules of the the Chinese government game.
Google set the date to leave china on April 10 due to censorship and hacking issues. Good news :)
Hacking e-mail accounts wasn’t “terrorism” last time I checked.
At the end of day it makes no difference, Google will be banned in China and people will simply use an allowed search engine that does censor listings.
Although it is nice to see a company put moral values ahead of money (so long as we agree with those moral values of course).
Surely you jest? there are a lot more corrupt govts. than China that I can think of. Let’s first look at the continent of Africa; (Democratic republic of Congo to name just one), then eastern European nations, a few middle-eastern countries(no liberties at all for women). China is a ways from what it used to be.
And although I am in the mix of capitalism, it bleeds corruption with all the various interpretations of the law, loopholes, so-called freedoms, leniencies for metro-killers (serial killers), mass-population-killers (Bush,Cheney), war-economy, defense spending, our big disaster aid for countries goes to military mainly for support & control. Nope, I don’t care for Dems, Republicans or Independents. politicians are mostly the same for me .
I know; the bottom line is would I want to live there? No, but there are worse places. Dealing with China is better than dealing with Iran, Russia, Nigeria, DROC, Venezuela, etc.
Yeah, I just woke up.
I guess I’m not surprised there’s news that LOLMIGOD CHINESE PEOPLE WILL NOW KNOW ABOUT TIANANMEN SQUARE WOOT LOL DEMOCRACY, this is a pretty Western obsession. The square itself is boring. Tourists can go there and take pictures. I expect the true value to be in modern events getting through Google, if China does not block access to full Google.
I recently saw a comparison of google results between the censored Chinese version and a western version (I think it was images specifically) with the search term being “Tiananmen Square”.
The Western side was pretty much 100% dude standing in front of a tank, while the Chinese results were pretty much 100% boring tourist photos of the square.
I dunno about you, but while I like this move by Google and I’m sure there are plenty of Chinese who want unrestricted Internet access, I also don’t expect people all over China to be all shocked and awed or anything. Heck, I would expect current American kids to be more shocked learning about Kent State or the nasty dirty deeds done in Central America and Iran (and that stuff is NOT censored at all… but you have to take initiative and look for it).
Maybe I’m relying too much on anecdotal evidence, though. We have students studying here in the Netherlands from China and they know how to use the Internet. And maybe this will be a bigger shock to those just feeling their way through the internet, such as older generations.
I don’t get this Stomme, how is a move from state controlled censorship to freedom of information not a massive issue?
Ask Australians how they feel about the internet filters their government have put in place, it’s a huge freedom of information issue to them and it’s not even total censorship like exists in China. I
Well, first, we don’t know if this new Google will be allowed. If the state still wants to keep control, they won’t allow it. In this case, the only thing that has changed is Google has done the Right Thing.
Second, maybe I’m assuming the average Chinese person is somewhat aware of the censorship; in that case, suddenly being able to reach everything would simply bring more information to them then they had before (this is also assuming they didn’t have a savvy kid in the house who was already getting around filters etc).
Third, I guess I was picking specifically on the Tiannenmen thing. I could be wrong, but I keep thinking people who find out about a particular and bloody protest on teh innernets for the first time will either not be terribly surprised by it, or will be too young to understand what it really was all about. Me, I was 9 or 10 years old. There’s a generation or two on the innerwebs younger than me. They may care a lot more about current things rather than “old” things.
I could also be wrong, my ideas are based on certain assumptions.
Uh oh, it looks like the Australian gov’t censored the rest of JJ’s post…
LOL, dunno where I was going to go with that… must have got sidetracked by something. 
Stomme, the new Google won’t be allowed and I think Google were doing the right thing anyway. Better a censored Google then a state controlled Baidu. Now they’ve further brought the issue of freedom of speech to the world stage.
At the end, this will all be “so-what”. If China creates new law that all ISP to block google then that’s that. Do I agree w/ Google’s approach? No, but it seems they don’t want to die silently and wanna going out with a BANG.
This whole change of attitude by Google has been brought about by the attacks recently made against it. Those attacks appear to have originated within the Chinese Government and so Google has decided that if the Chinese Government is prepared to break the law in other countries that there is no reason why Google should abide by Chinese law. Presumably there will be no google.cn within the next few weeks.
I doubt that’s the reason, if they broke the law in China to remonstrate against China for breaking the law in the USA then they’d be guilty of exactly the same thing that they’re condeming China for. Google are much too smart to get caught in such an obvious ethical contradiction.
I think that they finally had enough and decided to make a very public protest about human rights and freedom of speech abuses in China. It’s an awareness raising exercise.
I think that they finally had enough and decided to make a very public protest about human rights and freedom of speech abuses in China. It’s an awareness raising exercise.
Why do you think that (just curious)? Do you believe it’s because they have a different situation now than back when they first announced compliance with the Chinese rules (weren’t people protesting all over the place and throwing Google’s “don’t be evil” motto back at them and puppet shows and whatever the hell all kids do in Seattle?). I mean, why now? Why not then?