Thursday, June 08, 2006

Comrade Google & The Great Firewall of China

Kiko's House has had visitors from 65 countries in its relatively short but happy life. Those countries range from biggies like India and Canada to little guys like Barbados and Qatar, as well as places like Russian and Iran where Internet access cannot be taken for granted. But China -- the biggest of the big -- is conspicuous in its absence.

This is because shamelessly opportunistic U.S. companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and most recently Google kowtow to a Chinese government that has much to hide and much more to fear from a citizenry thirsty for unfettered information. As a result, those companies were able to do business in China only after they agreed to block access to politically sensitive information on their Chinese web browsers such as details on the political unrest that led to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Now Google co-founder Sergey Brin says he's having second thoughts about doing business in China on its government's terms and raised the possibility of pulling out of that lucrative market. Sort of.

Says Brin:

We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference. Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense.

Well, okay. Sort of.

As it is, Brin says most Chinese bypass the censored Google site – Google.cn – and use uncensored services, but it's the principle of the thing. Sort of.

He adds:

It's perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say: 'Look, we're going to stand by the principle against censorship, and we won't actually operate there.' That's an alternate path. It's not where we chose to go right now, but I can sort of see how people came to different conclusions about doing the right thing.
In the interests of full disclosure, Kiko's House runs on Google's Blogger software, which is free but prone to bouts of crankiness, like coughing up hairballs during the time when I get the most visitors. (It also ate parts of this post twice and denied me access altogether for three frickin' hours before I finally succeeded in uploading it. Hmmm.)

In light of Google's deal with the red devil, I've considered whether Kiko's House should take a stand and switch to other blogging software. Sort of.

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