How Evil Is Google?

The Twelve-Year-Old asks: How evil is Google?

Official Google Blog: Google in China : 1/27/2006 11:58:00 AM: Posted by Andrew McLaughlin, senior policy counsel: Google users in China today struggle with a service that, to be blunt, isn't very good. Google.com appears to be down around 10% of the time. Even when users can reach it, the website is slow, and sometimes produces results that when clicked on, stall out the user's browser. Our Google News service is never available; Google Images is accessible only half the time. At Google we work hard to create a great experience for our users, and the level of service we've been able to provide in China is not something we're proud of.

This problem could only be resolved by creating a local presence, and this week we did so, by launching Google.cn, our website for the People's Republic of China. In order to do so, we have agreed to remove certain sensitive information from our search results.... Launching a Google domain that restricts information in any way isn't a step we took lightly.... Filtering our search results clearly compromises our mission. Failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world's population, however, does so far more severely. Whether our critics agree with our decision or not, due to the severe quality problems faced by users trying to access Google.com from within China, this is precisely the choice we believe we faced.

Google image search first result for "tienanmen" on google.cn:

Google image search first result for "tienanmen" on google.com:

Comments

[bncthor]

Googles' decision to limit search results in China appears to me to be a sound business decision, largely free of ideology and censorship. In time, and, once the kinks are all worked out, the presence and operations of Google in China will be a positive, liberating force for the Chinese people.

[teddy]

From Shanghaiist.com:

Are we wrong to wonder what’s the big deal? Let’s look at some facts:

1. It is obvious to users of google.cn that the site has been censored: As Danwei pointed out, these characters appear at the bottom of every search results page on google.cn: 据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示 . That means, “To comply with local laws, regulations and policies, some search results are not displayed.” Never has it been more obvious to Chinese internet users that the government picks and chooses what they can and cannot see. We are not aware of other Chinese sites that make such an admission. Censorship is going to happen one way or another on the Chinese internet — that is not Google’s fault — isn’t it better that the search engine admits that it is happening?

2. google.com, the original version, is still accessible in China: And, yes, you can search it in Chinese. And, yes, you can still get all of the “bad” results you could get when using it before the launch of google.cn. Thus, if people get tired of the censored results at google.cn, they can log on to google.com. (Why anyone would choose google.cn in the first place, we’re not sure. Speed? More Chinese results?) We did a test search of a “bad” phrase in Chinese. You can compare the google.com results with the google.cn results. Quite a difference. But all of the “superbanned” sites still show up on the google.com results. Of course, clicking on the links will send you nowhere without the use of a proxy server. But that is nothing new. And it’s not Google’s fault. (What about Chinese college students who use campus connections that can only access the Chinese internet? Yep, they still can’t access google.com, so nothing has changed there. But now they at least have google.cn, which admits that it is censored, unlike other options.)

3. Google is not the first foreign company to make concessions in order to do business in China: Let’s be realistic, people.

The worst-case scenario would be if the Chinese government blocks google.com. It’s happened before. Could happen again. They can block whatever the hell they want. And if that block happens because of the addition of google.cn, then we will change our tune a little bit. But let’s hope there was some kind of we’ll-give-you-google.cn-and-you-let-us-keep-google.com arrangement made.

We may be wrong — in fact, we hope we are — but we suspect a very small percentage of Chinese internet users are interested in searching for “bad” words anyway.

[Jim S]

Corporations are not moral entities. Whatever it takes to make a buck is OK. What's sad is that they try to pretend that they will ever make money selling to the Chinese. The only profits derived from China are those coming from hyper-cheap labor. If you sell something that the Chinese government wants the Chinese people to be able to have, some Chinese company will steal your IP and start producing your product. Current estimates are that over 90% of the software running Chinese companies is pirated. Just one more competitive edge for them.

[Dan Ryan]

The Google Images you've displayed don't seem particularly meaningful. Most non-Chinese think of Tiananmen as the site of the 1989 demonstrations. Chinese think of Tiananmen as the square by the Forbidden City. Any algorithm that Google uses in China will reflect the differing link patterns, even without any censoring.

[Michael Robinson]

As much as I would like to join the high-fiving "busted" faction, I should point out that if you run the patented Google-exclusive PageRank algorithm on websites worldwide, and run the algorithm again on websites in China, you'll get pretty much the results shown.

In other words, the two tales of Tiananmen differ so much not because Google is censoring the images, but because they are running an index against a population of websites that are censoring the images.

Conclusion: bad bust.

[Michael Robinson]

As conclusive proof of my point, look at this link, which is the same search using the chinese-language characters for "Tian'anmen" on the "uncensored" main Google site:

http://images.google.com/images?q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=N&tab=wi

As you can see, the image selection is much closer to the search for "tiananmen" on the google.cn site. That's because websites that refer to "tiananmen" in the Chinese language are overwhelmingly censored. It has nothing to do with Google's participation in censorship. It's a direct consequence of how the PageRank algorithm ranks search results.

[ashok]

I'm a nutcase right winger, but I hated when Rupert Murdoch did business with China, and I hate that Google is doing any business with them.

Then again, I hate the fact I have to do business with them. I know running kids over with tanks is bad. I know it isn't worth a few dollars to give money to people who approve of such activities so they can upgrade their nuclear stockpiles. But apparently the rest of the world knows something I don't, so I'll shut up, and drop this link for your perusal, about more mundane issues:

http://www.jonasblog.com/2005/12/google-abuses.html

[BC]

I wonder if there are politically sensitive images that Google won't show us here in the U.S?

For that matter, take TV in this country. When I moved here from Canada, I was frankly shocked at how much blatant government propaganda it shovels into the faces of the American viewers. In Canada, we have government funded TV, versus the private model here -- so you'd sort of expect to see less propaganda in the U.S.

My guess is that people actually like their propaganda, better than the truth, and are willing to pay for it.

I imagine the same is true in China...

[anon]

So it is impossible to speed up google.com in China by adding more servers?

It is better to say nothing than to tell a transparent lie.

[dilbert dogbert]

I looked at the pictures and could only think: Did they get that guys name? That tank picture is so powerful. I hope someone knows his name and he still lives and he knows how much his action moved people. I hope that someday China will build a memorial to him.

[Harry Metcalfe]

Is there an English langauge version of ggole.cn se we can all see the difference to google.com? or a blog where the significant differenes are aired? My Chinese is limited to the numbers, whch use the same characters as Japanese, but are pronounced differently.

[Harry Metcalfe]

Is there an English langauge version of ggole.cn se we can all see the difference to google.com? or a blog where the significant differenes are aired? My Chinese is limited to the numbers, whch use the same characters as Japanese, but are pronounced differently.

[Branden Bell]

Alright, at least part of the statement by the Google exec isn't true. I just returned from the PRC about a week ago, after spending about six months in the Fujian province.

While I was there, google.com worked fine. No problems. Google news also worked fine, although sometimes the links stalled out (this was rare.) Google Images stalled sometimes. And I was using 56K dial-up, which is pretty bad.

I like google, but I know that their explanation isn't accurate. Whether they know that or not is up for debate.

[Auros]

I'm with Teddy, Dan, and Michael on this. Google had no choice; if they refuse to compete at all in China, somebody else collects cash there and eventually overtakes them -- maybe launches a hostile takeover at a time when their stock is dipping a bit.

Instead, they did the most they could to protest -- inform the user that the search is censored -- and continued to maintain access to the censored results on all their sites except the .cn one. If the Chinese completely block off any Google other than google.com, I guess we'll see what happens then...

[Auros]

Branden, you misapprehend the Google Blog's comments.

There have been periods when "the Great Firewall" blocked off access to Google.com. And, additionally, the firewall is set up to monitor traffic, and if you try to click on a "banned" search result, they'd cut off your internet access entirely for an hour or two.

If you weren't trying to search during one of the down periods, and you didn't go looking for banned stuff, you might not have noticed the issues.

Also, if you were there recently, you may have arrived AFTER Google negotiated whatever agreement it has, for Google.cn; as observed above, part of the deal may've been, "Quit screwin' around with access to Google.com!"

[Hilary]

Google.com is not accessible any more, neither is google.ch

[bathrobe]

Late last week certain strange things started happening to Google here in China. Google.com (including Google searches in other languages such as Japanese) suddenly became inaccessible. Gmail (which is mail.google.com，for those who haven't noticed) suddenly became inaccessible when the browser struck "google.com". Google.cn, which yields only doctored results, remained accessible.

There was then a rather strange pattern of events where the Japanese search page at google.com became accessible but search results yielded a "blank page" notice. Gmail became accessible again and then inaccessible.

This week (5 June), all Google search services, including those in foreign countries and foreign languages, are blocked, leaving google.cn the sole Google search page available to users in China. Gmail, however, is accessible.

The impression is that the Chinese authorities have been experimenting with ways to fine-tune their block so that users in China are allowed access to only one search service, the doctored google.cn service. In a gesture of magnanimity, they have also ensured that gmail remains available to users.

The new system is quite inconvenient in many ways. Google.cn offers only four alternatives for restricting searches: The whole web; Chinese web sites; Simplified Chinese web sites; and web sites in China. I had been used to using Google for various language-related tasks in the past (such as finding Japanese equivalents to English words, etc.) which will now become much more difficult. As usual, the unimaginative types in charge of the Internet in China have decided in their own heavy-handed way what people are allowed to use the net for. One suspects that the only reason gmail has been spared is because some bureaucrat (or maybe the amoral whizz kids at Tsinghua University who are usually entrusted with doing the government's dirty work) found gmail just too convenient to block :)

[Brandon Payne]

Yep, been no google at home in Najing for 3 days, but gmail and google.cn for at work downtown, China Wang Tong just came out and added a dns server to my settings to make google.cn work at my house and pop.gmail.com works, but no gmail.google.com