Whatever Google's intentions may be (and in agreement with earlier posts I don't hold Google's ethical stance all too highly), you mustn't underestimate the amount of publicity generated by this chain of events: first moving into China, then agreeing to censor, but then opening up after a perceived attack on human rights activists, and threatening to leave China. Google may harvest some "good will" amongst some folks through this publicity, but mostly it's the western public's perception of China as a behemoth repressor that has gained yet another notch.
Geert On Jan 13, 2010, at 11:32 PM, Victor Xray wrote: >> Here we have Google openly speaking in a refractory way about that very >> problem. The statement doesn't quite bluntly assert that the Chinese >> government is a criminal regime, but it certainly doesn't discourage that >> inference either. > > I think in this case, it's a rare case of business and ethics having a happy > co-incidence. Referencing information about the Chinese online search market > shows that actually, it isn't very large, relatively, in an economic sense, > to Google revenues, and also, Google is not the market leader there, but > rather local search company Baidu is. <...> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
