Though not overshadowing the ongoing illegal occupation of Iraq or other serious situations, freedom of speech seems to be the big topic in world affairs as of late, specifically the aforementioned controversy raging between the Muslim world and Europe or the ‘hear no evil, speak no evil’ conditions Google and Yahoo have implemented in China insofar as the state deems anyway. Incidentally, where Denmark is concerned, I read an article in the Seattle Times today quoting Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Danish Prime Minister, as saying the Danes are being ‘unfairly depicted’. How pathetic a statement is that? The chickens have decided to come home to roost. On the other issue of Google agreeing to censor information available to the people of China and Yahoo providing the officials private correspondences from its email service, is appalling.
I was first turned onto Google’s email services and search engine, from a colleague who said he preferred them because of the company slogan of “Do No Evil”, a kind of comforting assurance that they could be trusted as an internet company with ethics; unlike a lot of other services, the ads that appear on Google’s search engine are easily distinguishable from search results that come up in order of user preference- not in the order of the highest bidding sponsor. It’s not that searches performed with Google necessarily provided better results than the rest- indeed, I didn’t find them any more reliable than Yahoo or Dogpile. Rather, it was their motto; the honest image of a company that seemed to have arisen from humble beginnings to resounding success managing to do so ethically, that lured me in. Upon listening to a program on CBC, however, their ethics went out the window.
Similar behavior would not be met with such repulsion had it come from Yahoo or MSN. As a matter of fact, it was Yahoo, as cited by court documents, which turned over the details to an email transmission, outlining an internal Communist Party directive, citing concerns over the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, that changed the status of Shi Tao, from journalist to political prisoner, sentenced to 10 years. Just a few days ago, another dissident was imprisoned with Yahoo’s blessing. So much for privacy. Yahoo bent over for China a while back but the reverberation wasn’t noticed nearly as much because the company doesn’t claim to represent some high moral standard. They’re just another transnational corporation, acting within the frame of capitalism, out there to make as much money as possible; it’s common knowledge.
As of this month, google.cn, a Chinese version of the search engine, went online. So what’s the significance? Well, if it’s anything like Yahoo’s Chinese version, it means users will be barred from accessing information that falls outside the state’s interests, such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the ongoing genocide against Tibet, environmental destruction from factories that are denying millions of residents clean drinking water, resulting in skyrocketing cancer rates, or anything else that questions China’s atrocious human rights policy. Try looking up any of these issues on yahoo.cn.com and see how many pages come up. Worried about your ability to read Kanji? Don’t be; your search will come up empty.
The word is now out: Google is no more ethical than the rest; taken to task, their failure at maintaining their self gratifying slogan nosedives straight into the toilet. It’s one thing to publish something with the intent to ‘unfairly depict’ one fifth of the world’s population, crossing the line of “can we print it?” and “should we print it?” and coming up with the wrong choice. It's an entirely different ballgame stating your company’s goal “is to provide a much higher level of service to all those who seek information, whether they're at a desk in Boston, driving through Bonn, or strolling in Bangkok,” while at the same time strangling the democratic principal of freedom to 1.3 billion people living under the thumb of Beijing.
I was first turned onto Google’s email services and search engine, from a colleague who said he preferred them because of the company slogan of “Do No Evil”, a kind of comforting assurance that they could be trusted as an internet company with ethics; unlike a lot of other services, the ads that appear on Google’s search engine are easily distinguishable from search results that come up in order of user preference- not in the order of the highest bidding sponsor. It’s not that searches performed with Google necessarily provided better results than the rest- indeed, I didn’t find them any more reliable than Yahoo or Dogpile. Rather, it was their motto; the honest image of a company that seemed to have arisen from humble beginnings to resounding success managing to do so ethically, that lured me in. Upon listening to a program on CBC, however, their ethics went out the window.
Similar behavior would not be met with such repulsion had it come from Yahoo or MSN. As a matter of fact, it was Yahoo, as cited by court documents, which turned over the details to an email transmission, outlining an internal Communist Party directive, citing concerns over the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, that changed the status of Shi Tao, from journalist to political prisoner, sentenced to 10 years. Just a few days ago, another dissident was imprisoned with Yahoo’s blessing. So much for privacy. Yahoo bent over for China a while back but the reverberation wasn’t noticed nearly as much because the company doesn’t claim to represent some high moral standard. They’re just another transnational corporation, acting within the frame of capitalism, out there to make as much money as possible; it’s common knowledge.
As of this month, google.cn, a Chinese version of the search engine, went online. So what’s the significance? Well, if it’s anything like Yahoo’s Chinese version, it means users will be barred from accessing information that falls outside the state’s interests, such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the ongoing genocide against Tibet, environmental destruction from factories that are denying millions of residents clean drinking water, resulting in skyrocketing cancer rates, or anything else that questions China’s atrocious human rights policy. Try looking up any of these issues on yahoo.cn.com and see how many pages come up. Worried about your ability to read Kanji? Don’t be; your search will come up empty.
The word is now out: Google is no more ethical than the rest; taken to task, their failure at maintaining their self gratifying slogan nosedives straight into the toilet. It’s one thing to publish something with the intent to ‘unfairly depict’ one fifth of the world’s population, crossing the line of “can we print it?” and “should we print it?” and coming up with the wrong choice. It's an entirely different ballgame stating your company’s goal “is to provide a much higher level of service to all those who seek information, whether they're at a desk in Boston, driving through Bonn, or strolling in Bangkok,” while at the same time strangling the democratic principal of freedom to 1.3 billion people living under the thumb of Beijing.
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