All dissident materials are already blocked from search engine results. They’re not having any kind of positive political influence right now.

If you wanna go down that road, what Google, Yahoo, et al are doing is worse: they’re only showing the typical PR spin that China + assorted tyrannies want the public to see. They’re essentially helping feed the beast.

Yea, and breaking the law and getting kicked out of the country would mean you have ZERO influence to help fix things.

Yeah, turning over the names of dissident bloggers is REAL good for freedom.

Check your history. Doing business in China is good for the Chinese people and only brings them more and more freedom faster than not. Getting shut down by the Chinese government for breaking the local laws and leaving the country helps no one.

(Or is it “all bets are off” when it helps the bottom line?)

Corporations are run by people. Every decision ever made is taken by a small group of maximum four people. (Yes, larger committees are always dominated by a smaller group of up to four people). These are the people making this decision.

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

On the other hand, these dumb shareholder proposals show up every year, and reporters dutifully write about them like the sheep that they are. They’re nothing but a PR effort by human rights organization that want to get ink about them + Google, and probably if the board and managers actually implemented them, they’d get sued by the other 90% of shareholders.

Look up last year’s board meeting, and you’ll see that very similar proposals were floated, and voted down by an overwhelming majority.

It does kinda beg the question, if not even Google can do anything about China, what can anybody do? Maybe the US government can run a sort of Air America, except with the internet – free downloads of Tor, pirate satellites offering free internet to anybody with a dish in China, or just running a randomized bank of proxies. Of course, maybe that’s an international incident waiting to happen…

Maybe I’m wrong, because I am pretty anti-massive-near-monopoly companies, which is what I consider Google, at least measured by market share.

True, Google makes some great products, but I like to have multiple players in markets, so I tend to support the #2 or #3, even if their offerings are still up-and-coming.

No, I don’t go so far as a Google boycott, but I’m just saying I support the idea of having multiple players competing in market segments. It’s one reason why I support Apple and open-source vs. Microsoft, AMD vs. Intel, independent social networks vs. corporate ones, such as MySpace/Newscorp, Facebook/Microsoft, AOL/Bebo.

Just a thought.

Don’t expect much in the way of Do No Evil activism from Google.

With current stand and mindset, Google simply can not win Baidu even for cases of searching technology terms in Chinese.

Google needs people who understand the psychology of Chinese Communism Party to make marketing strategy and fine tune the technologies to adapt the hostile environment in PRC.

Come to my blog, Human Rights is my bag!

Our “Do No Evil” policy was non-binding and reflected the financial circumstances that Google found itself in at the time. Now that we are faced with a recession and our stock price has declined considerably, we have been forced to reevaluate our “Do No Evil” policy.

While we are still committed to making the world a better place, we can’t do that if our stock is not above $700. Therefore we have updated our policy to reflect a more pragmatic “Do No Evil Whenever Convenient” philosophy.

Thank you for your understanding. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience the shifting of our moral policy may have caused.