Google Gaggle

‘!http://static.flickr.com/23/93014089_2a183b98a1_o.jpg!’:http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen And so the mighty ‘fall’:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4647398.stm. Not with a bang, but hissing silence as their orignal corporate policy takes a deep breath of cold vaccum. Out with the old, in with the new: “We will censor whatever any 2 bit dicatator pays us money for!”. Is Pakistan far behind in getting the Google Musharraf version? Where results for democracy are 400% sure and there are no gunships in Baluchistan?


bq. Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand. *We believe strongly in allowing the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results.*

Google is now busy trying to recall all copies of it’s original manifesto, “Do no evil”. Unfortunately for them, they published it on paper, so that will take some time. Insiders say that their new motto is: “Don’t Be Evil – Unless It’s Profitable”. It’s a good thing George Bush has never heard of the Internet, else Google would soon have a Google America version, where the I’m feeling lucky button is replaced with a “WMD” button.

Everry large company does business in China, however they never claimed to be different. Walmart’s corporate policy says sweatshops are OK, so when they buy goods made by slaving children it comes as no suprise. Google however, has made much of their motto “Don’t be Evil”, so better -is- was expected out of them.

‘A quote on the official Google blog from the good old days:’:http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2004/09/china-google-news-and-source-inclusion.html _ _”For Internet users in China, Google remains the only major search engine that does not censor any web pages.”_ Those were the days. Google, along with tons of other websites have give a number of ‘justifications’:http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/google-in-china.html for censoring content, but they just don’t add up.

h4. links

* ‘Engine trouble’:http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,,1695167,00.html

* ‘Wikipedia entry on Google’:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google

5 thoughts on “Google Gaggle”

  1. Ideologies, mottos, mission statements…practical if they are to remain unchanged for ever?

    Reality Check

    Google started by two ‘campus kids’ dreamt of a perfect company with the most unorthodox way of work to stay creative, original etc. They’ve kept it going. Wonderful for the duo and its many employees. To keep growing as a corporation is a different ball game altogether. You step on toes, governments, societies, people everywhere. You learn your ideology will only take you so far.

    So what do you learn? You want to stay in the game, live up to SOME expectations (if not all) and continue to innovate, morph, mutate and grow. And yes this includes going back on things you thought would stay unchanged forever. You cannot live outside the ecosystem.

    All companies uphold some values. All companies revisit them. All individuals dream of the perfect world and live in the real world.

    Why is Google getting kicked in the gutt? It isnt a blog, website or NGO that can stand in front of a tank. Its a company with shareholders (who may or may not support freedom of speech) at stake.

    That’s just the way it works when you step out of the garage and go corporate.

    >>”…but they just don’t add up!”

    This is where I think you’ve got something. Come out clean Google and admit: “We have to change radically, we need to survive in this world and make a living. Love us or leave us.”

  2. Google has to evolve to meet the demands that has been brought upon them because of their growth in size. In layman’s terms, the bigger google gets, the more political power will be forced upon it, and the more orthodox their policies shall become.

    China is a country where a major firewall (great firewall of china) blocks almost any website that goes against the belief of the government. Thus, having a website that helps to cater towards that goal is ludacris.

    I remember back in America google was either blocked out or had large search terms shut off in order to prevent “malicious content” to be shown–that was in school though. Something similiar was in place at the library as well. Thank God there were no firewalls on major isps and the main links. I actually set up a proxy server at home and than visited it through my school in order to get complete access. Malicious indeed.

    Back to the case at hand: China is a growing market for Google which has to strive to provide shareholder value. Only than will it really survive in the highly competitive markets of today. In order to do so, they have decided to help cater towards the growing market by “filtering” their data in order to conform to the beliefs of the gov’t officials. The fact remains a large portion of Chinese might still find Google.cn to be a growing resource tool that makes their life easier than having to browse through the internet without it. So infact Google might have still followed their policy of Don’t be evil by allowing this large porportion of people in China to still visit their site and view search results.

    Google already has a policy to blacklist websites using black-seo techniques, like what they did with BMW.de. So the fact that they still blacklist websites does show that they don’t really believe in democracy in search results since democracy can use less-than-ethical techniques.

    Oh, and people have already figured out work-arounds from filtering the search results, just to make life easier on those who still like democracy to reign supreme.

  3. Khalid,

    Business is business. Everyone is an idealist until the idea takes money out of their pockets, so as it was no surprise for Walmart to exploit kiddie labor, it should be no surprise for ANY corporation to do what needs to be done to get the most for the investors. Such is life.

    Oh yeah, please also note that Google is now public, and the public influence may just have had something to do with this and that.

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