2006-01-28

Svar från Google

Jag mailade Google och uttryckte min besvikelse över deras beslut att gå med att censuerar/filtrera information. De svarar så här:

"The decision to do that was not an easy one for Google, in light of our mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." After a long process of study, analysis, and debate about the many technical, business, and ethical considerations, we concluded that the best available option was to provide our Chinese users with a search service that, while filtered, will be faster, more reliable, and, overall, more comprehensive than what's available today."

Med andra ord: Efter långt övervägande var det bättre att svika våra ideal, samarbeta med diktaturen och gå in på den kinesiska marknaden för där finns så mycket pengar att tjäna.

Idag har det kommit ett bra exempel på hur denna censur fungerar. Så här blir resultatet av en sökning på Himmelska fridens torg via det kinesiska Google, och så här via det engelska Google. (Via Haja)

2 kommentarer:

Mikke sa...

Mathias,

I have read a whole bunch of blogs and articles from both the US and China about this. This is a very smart way of Google to accomodate what the chinese government is forcing them to do to be allowed to have a .cn address (everybody in China can still connect to Google.com if they want to - allbeit in English). All search words that the government are censuring will have a text next to it that says that the search has been restricted - i.e. Google is telling the chinese people that censur has taken place. No other search engine in China does this. And Google today is small potato in China, who has it's own search-engine company, Baidu. They don't have the text.

You have to remember - the alternative for Google would be no chinese address - which means that Baidu - which is owned by the government, would pretty much have a monopoly on searches, and could exclude whatever information they want. I think that's a worse situation for the chinese people.

Yes, of course censur is wrong, but the situation in China is so bad, that small openings must be jumped on. In general most chinese bloggers welcome Googles entry into the market. And the faith in the internet for opening up the chinese information flow is very strong. Danwei does some good analysis of chinese media - here's today's article:

http://www.danwei.org/archives/002400.html

Anonym sa...

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