Google puts its foot down.

This is a picture of people laying flowers and making a traditional bow of mourning in front of the Google sign outside Google's Beijing headquarters.

Google's announcement that it will "review" its business operations in China and is no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine, Google.cn, is generating a range of reaction in China. Conversation over at the #googlecn hashtag on Twitter - created shortly after the announcement - has been raging fast and furious. The Chinese Twittersphere - comprised exclusively of people who are tech savvy enough to know how to get around censorship or they wouldn't be there - is generally cheering the news. Some need no translation, like this one which says: "Google's Do No Evil vs. CPC's Do No.1 Evil"(CPC means "Communist Party of China"). There's a report that the Tsinghua University security department has announced that students can't take flowers to Google without permission. Another person reports that all the Chinese Internet portals have been told by authorities that they're only allowed to use Xinhua News Agency and People's Daily reports on the subject - they're not allowed to use reports from other sources, and they should not feature today's news about Google on the front pages of their sites. Here is a report on how somebody posted a translation of Google's announcement on the Chinese web portal, Netease, and it was censored. One person suggests that leaving China frees up Google to focus on building the anti-censorship business instead of the censorship business. (UPDATE: China Digital Times is doing a running twitter translation here.)

On the other hand, a short Chinese-language report in Sina.com's tech section is generating a long thread of comments from people who are unhappy about Google's announcement because they don't want to lose access to Google. Somebody has set up a website, http://www.googlebacktochina.com/ with a Chinese header that translates approximately as "Give me back my Google." Famous tech blogger Keso mourns that Google's retreat brings the Chinese Internet one step closer to being an Intranet. Sichuan-based dissident Ran Yunfei is also unhappy, likening Google's retreat to a dissident who leaves China compared to one who stays in China and toughs it out.

Another flag-waving constituency is thumbing its nose and saying good riddance.

Google's decision is clearly controversial even among those in China who spend a lot of time fighting censorship, and is devastating to many more who aren't in the habit of using circumvention tools or don't know how.

Google's decision was tough and is going to have a great deal of of difficult fallout. Still, based on what I know, I think Google has done the right thing. They are sending a very public message - which people in China are hearing - that the Chinese government's approach to Internet regulation is unacceptable and poisonous. They are living up to their "don't be evil" motto - much mocked of late - and living up to their commitments to free speech and privacy as a member of the Global Network Initiative. 

I will be writing more on this topic soon - but first I must write the two articles I promised to write this evening, which are due in a few hours and not yet started...

Comments

[Dan E. Bloom]

oh i see, comments need moderation first. good idea. dan

[Jeff]

@John NYC

"I bet the timing of this decision had a lttle to do with the release of the Nexus 1 smartphone. Young Chinese are certainly slavering for it, lol."

I'm an expat living in Dalian, China. Let me tell you, the phones in East Asia are light years ahead of our so-called smart phones in the States, and this still holds true even after Nexus and the iPhone. Heck, I can use my cellphone as a metro ticket everyday. The young Chinese are slavering over the Nexus? Ha.

FYI, Nexus runs on Android, which is open source, and plenty of other phones run it and are on sale in China. Motorola's Android phones will be running Baidu and BING as search options. Too bad Google will not be getting any ad revenue whatsoever from the mobile Internet market in China, and what a market it is: 470 million Chinese use their phones to browse the net. Ouch.

Oh, by the way, the Chinese have already made their money producing those darn Nexus phones already. It's Google that will be left holding a bunch of unsell-able inventory. Extra ouch. The Chinese will be laughing all the way to the bank, again.

Get informed, dude. One last thing: it appears that you are not aware of the fact that Google is a distant second in the Chinese search market, trailing far behind the Chinese search engine Baidou. Tada... oh how the world looks differently from this side of the planet.

Be grateful to the Chinese, since they are propping up that bankrupt state of yours (bring Spitzer back!), whose finances were ruined by our so-called financial experts. Say, would you happen to be one of them?