GOOGLE’S halo has lost a bit of its shine. The company that has defined itself as the champion of internet users with its slogan “Don’t be evil” was slammed last week as hypocritical and self-serving for going ahead with a Chinese version of its search engine that will censor pages unpalatable to Beijing.
The critics are especially incensed because the news comes shortly after Google refused to give the US government access to search data, claiming it would violate its users’ privacy. The decision to cooperate with one of the world’s most repressive regimes therefore smacks of double standards, they say.
This is somewhat naive. Google may promote itself as being different to other search engines, but it is driven by commercial incentives. Giving up data to the US government would harm its brand in the US and risk damaging its market share. Likewise, refusing to cooperate with the Chinese government would exclude it from the biggest potential market in the world. In a business sense, the two decisions are consistent.
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But what about ethics? Surely it matters that Google is sacrificing principles for profit? Here, its critics are missing an important point. What matters far more than whether Google is betraying its principles is whether its behaviour will have a positive or negative effect on people in China: what it will mean for freedom of expression, democracy and the evolution of the internet.
Let’s look at what will actually do. It will exclude web pages that promote democracy or criticise the government, and certain foreign news sites. But unlike with other search engines in China, such as Yahoo and Baidu, users will be informed whenever a page has been blocked. Google is not offering email and blog services, which it says could be used to persecute users, something that has already happened with Yahoo.
True, in cooperating with Beijing, Google is helping to institutionalise censorship in a country where citizens have no freedom to protest. Yet Chinese internet users would be a lot worse off if Google had stayed away. Up to now their only access to Google has been through the Chinese language version of , which is filtered unilaterally by the Chinese government, resulting in a haphazard and unreliable service that is down much of the time.
As New ĐÓ°ÉÔ´´ went to press, human rights advocates and several US congressmen were trying to persuade Google and other search engines to attend a congressional hearing this week on where to draw the line when working with repressive regimes. Let’s be clear: there is an ethical line that should not be crossed. But in deciding where it lies, western governments and campaigners should consider the consequences for those who have to live under such regimes. Just because a course of action is motivated by self-interest does not necessarily make it evil.
