Support Google Against China
So I’m not normally a big fan of Google, given the company’s support for net neutrality and the generally liberal tendencies it is associated with. However, yesterday The Washington Post highlighted Google’s opposition to policies of the Chinese government regarding the Internet and Internet-providing companies. Therefore, I applaud Google for standing up against China.
I was listening to the Laura Ingraham show today, and this issue was brought up. Ms. Ingraham suspected that Google will back down in the end, letting China continue its gross human rights and business practices violations. I disagree, however- Google has made a stand, and to go back on that stand would show it to be weak. This would not do anything positive for the company’s standing with non-Chinese markets, whereas standing up against China might actually give Microsoft and other companies the guts to do the same. This could cause major change in certain Chinese policies. Google literally could be the tipping point that causes technology companies to stop allowing the abuses the Chinese government consistently heaps on them.
The problem is that all of this is possibly a Google PR farce. Rumor has it that the Goog’s Chinese branch was being infiltrated with government agents. Remember, Google saves all your search results anonymously and that is information the government would want to get at. Anyway, rumor is that the offices were so infiltrated with Chinese gov plants that they had to get out. So the PR people spin it as “leaving for freedoms sake” yada yada yada and blamo they get a weeks worth of positive press.