Posts Tagged ‘Google going out of China’
If I were a sergey
(Ya ba da ba da ba dam)
Remember “Fiddler on the roof” and Tuvia the milkman singing? It is the privilege of losers and nobodys to fantasize how they would do everything better if only they were rich or famous, had power or ran a global Internet brand.
Watching Sergey Brin talks about Google’s China (non) decision at TED, the thought crossed my mind that – if I were to found google – the one thing I’d do is to change the motto from “Don’t be Evil” to “Don’t be stupid”.
Ok, I’d mainly do that because I have no clue how to do any of the other things Brin does, but also because stupidity, after all, is a much more wide-spread problem than actual evil. Stupidity is, for instance, not seeing reality as it is, which can lead one to false assumptions and unrealistic expectation (such as expectations for regime change or radical change of policy where there are going to be none).
“Don’t be stupid” – I kind of like this motto, altough it is not likely to become very popular.
A couple’s counseling perhaps?
So, Big Ge vs. The Evil Empire.
Few random thoughts:
No matter what Google’s motives in giving the ultimatum really was, it’s certainly a legitimate business decision, even if for PR reasons it is disguised as a moral one. Is it the right decision? It’s a pretty huge bet for both The G and The Emperors.
As Mr. Danwei aptly put it (who seems to have his own little fit of exasperation with the GFW): “China’s Internet does not meet international standards. Without Google, there is no way to pretend that it does“. This is a risk for the censors: a crisis of confidence that might enhance some of their worst fears, or might have broader consequences on the world’s willingness to do business withChina. If google.com is blocked in China (and this is not at all a necessary, or even likely to happen following google.cn departure), the GFW will become more noticeble, and therefore less effective.
From Google’s point of view, of course, there is the risk of China managing to pull it off (as it has done so far), continue it’s snail-pace reforms with the help of the more patient Baidu and Bing and becoming even more important a market for Internet companies. Once exiting, it won’t be easy for google to make it’s way back to that market.(English translation here)
If the great wall of fire crumles down soon, google is likely to get much of the credit, but really, how likely is that to happen? If not, this momentary PR victory will be quickly forgotten.
And just one more regarding the “Tightening” of the censorship, widely seen as the reason for Google’s January surprise: There has been a tightening of supervision and censorship over the Internet this last year, and especially since the July 5th Urumqi events. That is undeniable. However, this tightening, rather than being proactive, is a retroactive – and rather desperate – attempt to seal the floodgates after these have already been breached. The last few months seem more like a panicked response to something that has already happened, and is quite irreversible, so why pulling out because of a policy that’s already doomed?
Remember Hotmail and Yahoo Mail being blocked in many parts of China around the time of the SARS epidemic? or CNN site being kept behind the wall? That was a response to a rapidly growing number of Internetusers in China – and the unease of the government with the new access for information. It is basically the same now, only those who whine about the censorship being “unprecedented” forget that twitter and YouTube as main news sources is also an unprecedented phenomena. There is likely to be an adjustment, and the pendulum is likely to go back towards more tolerable censorship.
Who would have thought the next superpowers clush (WWIII?) will be between C & G? And just like most other wars, it’s pretty damn hard to find justification or a good reason for why it has broken out in the first place.