China Censorship Damaged Google, Founders Admit
January 27th, 2007Does Sergey Brin have a secret degree in rocket science?
Via: Guardian:
Google’s decision to censor its search engine in China was bad for the company, its founders admitted yesterday.
Google, launched in 1998 by two Stanford University dropouts, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was accused of selling out and reneging on its “Don’t be evil” motto when it launched in China in 2005. The company modified the version of its search engine in China to exclude controversial topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Falun Gong movement, provoking a backlash in its core western markets.
Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr Brin admitted yesterday: “On a business level, that decision to censor… was a net negative.”
Posted in Perception Management | Top Of Page
Well, DUH. Just a reminder: there’s Altavista, Yahoo and a bunch of others who would be happy for your business. I’m running through them all to see which is best, since Google started deciding they’re a government agency.
clusty.com is nice. unfortunately, google is far and away superior to any one search engine.
i was kind of excited when i saw the headline “China Censorship Damaged Google, Founders Admit” the other day. i thought perhaps the googsters had had a revelation about their horrific business practices. instead we got some bullshit about a negative net gain. these guys don’t care about anything other than money. i feel stupid for entertaining other notions.
the quote from the article linked on this blog is misleading. a better quote is(from http://www.forbes.com/2007/01/26/google-youtube-carbon-lead-citizen-cx_hc_davos07_0126google.html ):
“Brin said the damage to Google’s image made the deal a “net negative.” But Page wouldn’t say it was a bad move. “I would hate for us as a company to make what we think is the wrong decision for people in China based on our reputation.”
Both argued that some access to information in China is better than nothing. Brin said he was instinctively opposed to the deal because he was born in the Soviet Union. “Having felt that kind of oppression, I would never have wanted to compromise in that direction.””
the “net negative” he refers to is negative publicity. he argues that his business should not make a decision based upon bad publicity. ie – money trumps publicity and reputation. who cares if everyone thinks i’m a scoundrel as long as i’m making tons of cash.
brins quote relating his soviet background with the china deal should have ended “I would never have wanted to compromise in that direction – before realizing how much money i would make. i mean, what am i stupid?”
as for some information being better than none? hogwash. that might help ease brin’s nightmares, but it is absolute rubbish. hey, at least the chinese have a whole bunch of lies to cling to instead of nothing. this whole thing makes me ill.
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