Google in China: degrees of evil

So it has happened. Google has caved in. It has agreed to actively censor a new Chinese-language search service that will be housed on computer servers inside the PRC.

Obviously this contradicts its stated desire to make information freely available to everybody on the planet, and it contradicts its mission statement: "don't be evil."  As Mike Langberg at the San Jose Mercury News puts it: their revised motto should now read "don't be evil more than necessary."

Everybody and their dog is reporting on this new development, and I've even been quoted. But as of this writing the new Google.cn service has not actually gone live (right now when you type Google.cn into your browser you are re-directed to: http://www.google.com/ig?hl=zh-CN , which is their Chinese language service hosted in the U.S.). Nobody has yet had the chance actually to see this Google.cn. So what do we know? We know that they - like everybody else doing internet information services in China - are committing evil.  But I want to get a better sense for exactly where they rank on the evil scale. To give them a score, I need to see and play with the search engine, but since it's not up yet, I can't.

(UPDATE AT 8:40am EST Weds: I still can't access Google.cn but apparently some in China now can. The Chinese blogger "Undersound" has some initial Chinese blogger reactions over at Global Voices. He includes a link to a screenshot showing what the censor message looks like in the search results.)

What we do know at this point is that Google seems to be trying to minimize it's evilness in several ways, according to how their statements describe the service:

1.  Google says they will put up a notice at the bottom of the search page informing users when the results have been filtered. To my knowledge, none of their competitors in China are doing this. Therefore, while not escaping evilness, they do get a brownie point for being more transparent and honest with Chinese users than their competition. But to see how big this brownie point should be, we need to look at where that notification is placed on the page and how obvious it is to the user. We also need to see whether the Chinese government tries to get them to remove that notice, and if so whether they hold their ground.

2. They say that they will have a link somewhere on the Google.cn page enabling users to access the U.S.-hosted version at: http://www.google.com/ig?hl=zh-CN. So that Chinese users who prefer can opt for the pre-Google.cn experience. The question is: how prominent will this option be on the page and how well explained will it be? Will it be something that only a very small number of people know to use? Or will it be promoted and clearly explained as an option?   Also, what happens if the Chinese netnannies use the existence of Google.cn as an excuse to block the U.S.-hosted Google entirely? That would be very bad. And if that happens, how will Google respond? Will they shrug their shoulders and sigh? Or will they push back?

3. Google says it has opted not to provide any services such as email or blogging services that would require hosting user data inside Chinese jurisdiction. This is a clear choice they have made to avoid having to turn users over to the Chinese police as Yahoo did or to censor bloggers as Microsoft does. Will they stick to this choice or will the lure of business draw them deeper into evilness?

I don't like the fact that Google is censoring in China at all. Google spokespeople liken what they do in China to the filtering they do in France and Germany - censoring porn and Nazi sites in compliance with their laws. I do not believe you can compare compliance to laws in democratic societies to what they're doing in China. In France and Germany, there is some connection between the laws and the user's consent. People in those countries have the ability to vote out of office the politicians who make unpopular laws. Chinese users have no way of punishing their government for its censorship policies by voting the current group of leaders out of office.

But now that Google is censoring, I think we need to watch very closely to see how transparent it will be about what it's censoring and why: how honest it is going to be with Chinese users? One of the big problems with the search experience in China right now is that if you use Yahoo or Baidu or Sina search, you have no way of knowing that information exists out there that you've been denied access to. Google will at least be letting people know: "hey, there's a lot more out there which people outside China can see, but your government won't let me show it to you." That is at least a positive step towards honesty and respect for the Chinese user's intelligence. Will that lead to greater user trust and thus greater competitive advantage? If so, might that force other companies to be more honest with their users as well?  Or is this all wishful dreaming?

At the end of the day, this compromise puts Google a little lower on the evil scale than many other internet companies in China. But is this compromise something Google should be proud of? No. They have put a foot further into the mud. Now let's see whether they get sucked in deeper or whether they end up holding their ground.

On another related development: Today the Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that technology companies seem to be discussing a possible industry-wide code of conduct for doing business in China:

...some U.S. tech companies are working behind the scenes to craft for the Internet in China an equivalent of the Sullivan Principles, guidelines formulated in the 1970s that helped mobilize U.S. corporate divestment to protest South African apartheid.

It will be very interesting to see if that really ends up happening.

Comments

[Song]

I do not think that's something relative to the word "evil". Even Google do not do that, the PRC goverment still is filtering the contents.
So I think it is better for Chinese people to get the high quality service of Google (vs other local company).

[Gag Halfrunt]

The Guardian in the UK today has a leader about Google and China:

Whether Google might have done better in the long run commercially by keeping to the high moral ground at a time of rapid change in China will now not be known. It has an approach that is more ethical than most, but the multitude of enthusiasts will find it hard to reconcile its mission to provide all information to everyone when there are exceptions for words such as "democracy". It is easy to see why Google is doing this. This does not alter the fact that, sadly and in a significant way, it is not the same company today that it was yesterday.

[rezzrovv]

Just one more example of left leaning hypocrisy. I can't wait to see the apologist drones start spinning this in Google's direction as is already occurring in the one comment to this post. It is easy to hold convictions in a vacuum (meaning, outside the realities of a competitive marketplace, academics make a living of it). It is when those convictions are challenged in the pocketbook that integrity and character present themselves, or rather don't.

[Merry]

I just tried out the new service. I searched democracy "民主” and it came back with the truncated results. The note exlaining that due to local laws and policies, some results were not displayed was pretty prominent, in an italicized font at the bottom of the page. If there was a link to the US-hosted google, I couldn't find it - when I tried to change my search to the whole internet instead of just the chinese internet, it just jumped back to China.
Song (above) is right, though, in the sense that even before introducing this search engine, when googling in China results were censored and many pages were blocked - it is hard to see this as a really new and different development.

[Robert Swipe]

Rebecca,

I know there are concerns about Google conniving at the Chinese govt's censoring of certain sensitive issues but I think there has been some over-reaction in the west. We at The Robert Swipe Show have very close links with China and our daily satirical columns are very widely read there. We have only ever been asked to make the most insignificant and non-contentious alterations to our posts at the Chinese government's request. I mean, let's face it, what's a few wire taps/scrubbed out blogs between trading partners?? Check out our site and see how working closely with Beijing doesn't have to mean sucking up to a vile regime that tortures and subjugates it's people and those of the Kingdom of Tibet:

Love on ya,

Bob

[Jonathan]

I think it's interesting to speculate what might have happened if Google had said no. They might have lost business, at least for now, but they also might have made life more difficult for the Chinese police state, and they would have set an example for other companies. And by drawing attention to censorship and their refusal to participate they might actually have enhanced their own competitiveness in the long run.

[GregReg]

The WSJ article quoted at the end of Rebecca's post is available free.

[Slava]

Can someone tell me if censorship applies for search quieries in written in Chinese only? Because I went to the google.cn and did english searches for "democracy", "Falun Gong", whatnot and got all the results i could ever want (Wikipedia was particularly prominent). Or does the censorship only apply if you're searching from within China?

[Brad]

Jonathan, good point, Google could have just catapulted themselves to the highest moral ground among their rivals, and that would have been very good for their business and brand, people would have been talking about it for years ... "Microsoft sold out and helped the PRC do censorship, but Google didn't!" Instead they are trading individual rights for money. How about this for a bumper sticker: "No Blood for AdSense!"

[Robert]

As the editor of Blogger News Network, I have discontinued Google Ads on our site until Google lives up to its alleged corporate values, and I invite other blogs to do likewise.

Story:

http://www.bloggernews.net/2006/01/blogger-news-network-discontinues.