Google, "Don't Be Evil" to the Chinese People

In the new Chinese version of Google (http://www.google.cn), Google has built in a filter in its search engine to censor information the Chinese Communist Regime dislikes. Many major media around the world have criticized this move. Google officials admit that this compromise for the goal of advancing in the Chinese market contradicts their informal corporate motto of "Don't be evil," yet Google management thinks that this is a worthwhile compromise.

How and why is it worthwhile? It is easy to see that there are over 100 million Internet users in China, and the potential of this market could be huge. In other words, it is the 100 million-plus Internet users (not the dictatorship) who could bring a sizeable profit for Google. Yet how does Google thank the Chinese people who it benefits from? A comparison between the two websites: google.com and google.cn (Chinese Google) shows that what Google censors is almost entirely information that is vitally important to the lives and basic rights of the Chinese people.

For example, a search using the key words of the Chinese characters for "SARS, truth & Jiang Yanyong" returned 102 results in google.cn, compared with 10,900 in google.com, the worldwide search engine; more than 99% of the sites were censored. A search for the Chinese characters for "Shanwei protect civil rights" yielded 39,200 results in google.cn, compared with 135,000 in google.com; the Chinese version censored more than 70% of the websites. A search for "protect rights, civil rights, freedom of belief, freedom of speech" returned 3,050 and 22,100 in google.cn and google.com, respectively; more than 85% of the sites were censored in the Chinese version. Complete information on Falun Gong (not just the Chinese Communist Party's -CCP- one voice of slander) is censored even more severely.

Google defended this action of cooperating with the dictatorship to deprive the Chinese citizens of their right to know, saying that this is being considerate of the Internet users so that they would not feel frustrated when they click on a web link to a site that has been blocked by the Party. I would like to remind Google not to underestimate the intelligence of the Chinese people. A person who uses the search engine is trying to get information. If he sees that a website he is interested in has been blocked, at least he will know two things:

1. Outside of China, there may be different reports than what the CCP says on this topic. The Internet user should then take reporting by the CCP's mouthpiece with a degree of skepticism.

2. Before clicking on the link, the Internet user can view the summary of the page on Google. There is a substantial amount of information on the summary page, especially compared to what little outside information is available in Mainland China. In other words, Google's censorship deprived the Chinese Internet users of many opportunities to learn about an issue from different angles. This contradicts the ultimate goal of a search engine assisting people to gather information. What truly frustrates those who search is not seeing that the site they are looking for is blocked, but that there is complete censorship on what they can find.

For example, if a Chinese reader has questions about the "Tiananmen Square Self-Immolation" and does a search for "Tiananmen Self Immolation & Falun Gong" he can find 9,170 search results in google.cn, and almost all of them are one-sided reports repeating what the CCP said. If Google allowed Chinese Internet users the same right as the rest of the world, he would have found 99,600 results on google.com. Although he may still find that most of the links would be blocked, it would be easy to see that many people outside of China have a different understanding of what actually happened.

When the rule of law and liberty become a reality in China, the people will take necessary and just action on the dictators who caused the people's suffering. Chinese people will also not forget those who assisted the dictators. Those who have helped the CCP in the regression of Chinese society have made a shameful entry for themselves in history.