Lesser evil?

Joining the fray in the Google China censorship (soon-to-be?) debacle.

I'd like to put things in perspective, so a chronology is in order:

1. 24 January 2005. Google agrees to censor sites that are objectionable to the Chinese government, puts up a Chinese domain, Google.cn.


2. Google draws the ire of the community for its "Great (fire)wall of China" compromise, resulting in protests.


3. Two days later, the search giant issues a policy statement, saying that "filtering search results clearly compromised (its) mission, (but) failing to offer search at all is far more severe."


4. Several articles have cropped up to test how extensive Google.cn filtering (read: censorship) is done.

In the span of two days, all focus is on China (that is, Google in China). Or maybe not. There are also contrarian views and begrudging respect that, at least, Google is being transparent about what it intends to do with its Chinese domain.

Well, here's my take, FWIW. We have to face the fact that democracy (the western, US-dominated definition, at least) has its boundaries, and it stopped in the Chinese borders. Information should be free, of course, but in light of recent events, whatever information -- however little -- is available is a whole lot better than none at all.

Authoritarian regime notwithstanding, at least the Chinese government has not yet ordered Google to disclose information or remove otherwise "objectionable content" from any of its services, unlike what Microsoft and Yahoo did. Google has wisely not offered its mail and blogging services in China to prevent that from happening.

Although it's ironic that it has resisted attempts to provide web search data to the US government (a commendable move, BTW), I mean, face it, China may react differently. Besides, they have that 5% of the world's population set in their scopes.

Google also plans to be transparent, it says that it will put up a notice to inform users when their search results have been filtered, even going so far as to provide a link to a US-hosted (and, hopefully, uncensored) Chinese Google (http://www.google.com/ig?hl=zh-CN); effectively telling users that, "hey, there's a world full of information out there, it's just that your government won't allow you to see them."

It is very possible, of course, that Beijing may force Google to take down the aforementioned notices, but let's wait and see.

I fear, though, that with Google (and Microsoft and Yahoo!) setting precedents on how they play along with China, other internet-based companies may follow suit and compromise just so they can penetrate the huge potential Chinese market. I don't know what the situation is in China, nor the working conditions there, but I'm all for going into the Chinese market -- a connected world is a better world.

(Then again, with pr0n, spams and scams abound, the Chinese might be well off.)

"Information should be free." That's a classic hacker motto, and with the resilience of the internet (not to mention inherent Chinese ingenuity -- not as ingenuous as Pinoys, though), I have high hopes that Google.cn (and censorship, in general) notwithstanding, the Chinese people will be connected and informed.