Google says no to censorship

It's official. Google is done with China. At least their search function is. For the technical details of Google's decision to re-route traffic to Hong Kong, check out this article in the Christian Science Monitor.

A Wired Magazine article a few days ago noted that Google still has two research and development operations in China mostly related to the Android operating system. For now, those operations remain intact.

With this decision, Google re-affirms my belief in a corporation's ability to make decisions for the common good, while looking beyond immediate profit gains. It's no secret that China's collective "buying power" (if you will) is the largest in the world. The Christian Science Monitor article points out there are "400 million users -- the world's biggest web audience." That's a lot of eye balls on your banner ads.

It would have been really easy for Google to compromise it's unwritten (but well known) "do no evil" philosophy in the name of "market potential." But the culture of the internet, that which has allowed Google to flourish, is one of open sourcing and contributing to the good of the whole. It's not about control of information or limitations on freedom. It's about creating a world where information can be found, learned, understood and proliferated in order to spread knowledge and benefit everyone.

According to the article, David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer said:
“We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement."

The moment a powerful and hugely important multi-national corporation begins to back down on the fundamental principles that made it successful is the moment when not only the company begins to fail, but the community as a whole begins a dangerous downward trajectory. Because if Google had agreed to censor itself in China because the market was simply too big to be left alone, then there would be no limit to the control governments or other global actors would have on not only Google, but the internet as a whole.

We can all pretend like we are scared Google will one day take over the world because it will have accumulated so much knowledge about us throughout the course of your online lives that it will have no choice but to dominate the entire globe. But this decision has reassured me that success and power does not have to equal compromise and corruption in this globalized world. People and corporations do still stand behind their beliefs and that makes me more comfortable supporting them.

Sure, China still has to respond, and I'm sure the negotiations will continue and maybe some other compromise will be reached down the line, but for now, this is a big step.