The Chinese government is the one trying to crack down. Google can choose to be complicit and stay, or fail to be complicit, and leave.
It is not Google's fault that the government is continuing to crack down. If the end result is lowered access to information, lay the blame at the feet of the proper people: the Party.
Incidentally, if China does decide to go culturally isolationist, that's the end of me worrying about them as an economic threat over the next thirty years. None of us is as strong as all of us. (No, not even having 1 billion people will count; the disadvantage of having one dominant closed culture will dominate in the information and idea era.)
In late 2008, just after the Beijing Summer Olympic games, the censoring took a turn for the worse, Mr. Brin says. Chinese authorities also began to tell Google it needed a number of additional licenses to operate its business, according to people familiar with the requests.
Last year, Google was further hamstrung when Beijing accused it of having too much pornography on its site and forced Google to disable some features for a period. Google's YouTube video service, which China had blocked periodically over the years, became inaccessible in the country.
Even if every word you say is true, I honestly don't care. I don't give any credit to Google for agreeing to censor on behalf of the Chinese government, and every second they continued I count as a complicity with a regime that has no respect for human rights. Even if the deal didn't change one iota, it was a shitty deal and they should have pulled out sooner.
Comments
The Chinese government is the one trying to crack down. Google can choose to be complicit and stay, or fail to be complicit, and leave.
It is not Google's fault that the government is continuing to crack down. If the end result is lowered access to information, lay the blame at the feet of the proper people: the Party.
Incidentally, if China does decide to go culturally isolationist, that's the end of me worrying about them as an economic threat over the next thirty years. None of us is as strong as all of us. (No, not even having 1 billion people will count; the disadvantage of having one dominant closed culture will dominate in the information and idea era.)
[deleted]
According to the article, the deal did change:
In late 2008, just after the Beijing Summer Olympic games, the censoring took a turn for the worse, Mr. Brin says. Chinese authorities also began to tell Google it needed a number of additional licenses to operate its business, according to people familiar with the requests.
Last year, Google was further hamstrung when Beijing accused it of having too much pornography on its site and forced Google to disable some features for a period. Google's YouTube video service, which China had blocked periodically over the years, became inaccessible in the country.
Even if every word you say is true, I honestly don't care. I don't give any credit to Google for agreeing to censor on behalf of the Chinese government, and every second they continued I count as a complicity with a regime that has no respect for human rights. Even if the deal didn't change one iota, it was a shitty deal and they should have pulled out sooner.
>What changed is Google is losing market share
[Citation Needed]
Brin said they pulled out because of the combination of two things:
1) hackers breaking into dissidents' gmail
2) increasing hassles complying w/ govt demands (censorship and otherwise)
It's funny that you're contradicting him.