Google: Human Rights Caucus Briefings

Andrew McLaughlin at Google has submitted the paper, Congressional Human Rights Caucus Members’ Briefing “Human Rights and the Internet – The People’s Republic of China”.  He submitted the paper to Congress in lieu of attending himself.

I recorded a podcast about Google.cn last week.  I've spent a lot of time reading about it since then.  I've spent a lot of time listening to people talk about it since then.  And the more I think about what has happened, the more I think Google did the best they could do.  Not necessarily the right thing, but the best thing.

China is a quickly rising nation, there's no doubt about it.  They are the fastest growing marketplace in the world, and any company that isn't doing business in China may not be doing business at all in a decade.  Microsoft knows this, Yahoo knows this and Google knows this.  If Google was to hold to their motto of 'Do no evil' and stay out of China, they'd be signing their own death warrant as a company.

Google is trying to get into China while compromising their principles as little as possible.  They are censoring search results, but they are letting the user know when they've been censored.  They are holding off on implementing Gmail and Blogger until they can guarantee users' privacy.  Unluckily, this probably means China will never get these tools, unless Google makes further compromises.  They're trying, but I think this is a losing battle.

For so long the Internet has been USA-centric.  China is changing that; they have laws and ideals that differ fundementally from those we hold in the USA, and they have the clout to enforce their will.  And as China forces Google to make changes, other countries are going to realize they also have the ability to force localized changes.

I still don't believe Google did the right thing.  But if Google had stuck to their guns by refusing to do business in China, they would have been handicapping themselves as a company.  That's the reality of being a publicly traded company; sometimes you have to sacrifice principles in the name of making a profit.  But Google is making every effort to hold on to their motto of 'Do no Evil' while still bowing to the will of the China.