Google Admits Compromising Principles in China 459
muellerr1 writes "Google co-founder Sergey Brin admitted that it had adopted 'a set of rules that we weren't comfortable with' in their Chinese activities. Though it doesn't yet sound like they're admitting to actually doing evil, it does appear that they are thinking about pulling out of China rather than compromise their 'do no evil' motto."
It's called being human (Score:4, Insightful)
From their FAQ: [slashdot.org] I thought everyone on Slashdot hated the RIAA, the MPAA, and Microsoft. Why do you keep hyping CDs, movies, and Windows games?
Big corporations are what they are. They sell us cool stuff with one hand and tighten the screws on our freedoms with the other. We hate them every morning and love them every afternoon, and vice versa. This is part of living in the modern world: you take your yin with your yang and try to figure out how to do what's right the best you can. If you think it has to be all one way or the other, that's cool, share your opinions, but don't expect everyone else to think the same.
Nobody is perfect, not even Google.
Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
they lose my trust (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good for Brin! (Score:4, Insightful)
If they pull out of China, it will be for business reasons, not moral ones. Sure, they get to act like they're doing it so they won't be "evil," but they'll really be doing it because they're afraid the bad publicity the China issue has been generating and will continue to generate will drag down their numbers in other areas.
Shareholders? (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like you're saying that since greed is universal, it's acceptable to help an oppressive regime in the name of profit.
I know I'm going from zero to Godwin in only ten seconds, but the Nazis were just doing their jobs, too. Obviously there is a huge difference between filtering search results and gassing people and putting them in mass graves, but the logic doesn't improve any as the severity decreases.
What about US censorship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Admittedly, it doesn't go as far as China's censorship, but this is a slippery slope. Why is censorship there "evil", but censorship here is not? Google is complying with the law. Yes, I think it's a bad law. But since when is obeying the law evil? Why is it up to Google to crusade against government policy? Are they some kind of political super-hero?
Google employees in china (Score:5, Insightful)
All eyes are on Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Many companies are starting to follow Google's lead in many ways and on many things. If they say they are considering pulling out and then fail to do it, the disappointment in Google will be enormous. If Google lived and prospered everywhere EXCEPT China, that could only serve to make Google look good and China look bad.
I feel pretty much the same about IP and DRM issues in the world where if the world refuses and legislates against IP and DRM leaving only the US with such restrictive laws, it will really make the US look bad and evil.
Google (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Google did no evil (Score:5, Insightful)
C) Don't bow to the Chinese government, they will not allow the site. They are the ones denying the Chinese people access to Google, not Google. Which means Google is doing no evil, but the Chinese government is.
You can't sugarcoat "Agree to censor" enough to make it not evil, sorry.
Interesting... (Score:2, Insightful)
Do No Evil...How do they define it? To what purpose does one not wish to do evil? Is it to appease God or the public sensibility of evil? Do they, the Google execs, really know what evil is? I think it can be simply answered, but I know for one that I cannot answer it, but I hope they reconsider their motto's premises as they reconsidered their dealings in China...
-- Bridget
Re:Good for Brin! (Score:5, Insightful)
Google didn't do evil... They just didn't do good (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it Google's job to reform China? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why there's anger at Google for obeying Chinese laws. Do I agree with those laws? Hell no. But business is business. Google doesn't make money from fostering democracy in foreign lands. They make money from selling ads. China is potentially a very large market, and so Google is doing what it has to as a profit-oriented venture.
If you feel the need to blame anyone, blame the dictators. Google is just doing business.
And before this discussion degenerates into WWII analogies, remember that Google is just a damn search engine and what's being repressed are just frigging web pages. No human is being abused or tortured by Google's actions.
The reaction I've seen on this site on others to Google's decision is way out of line to what was done.
I have no doubt that China will need to liberalize their government. If they want to be an effective technological power, they will need smart people and that means increasingly free access to information.
Re:What about US censorship? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a perfect example... (Score:4, Insightful)
-SmR
other evils (Score:3, Insightful)
Google drops conservative sites from Google News. [wnd.com] Interesting that 98% of all political donations by Google employees went to support Democrats. Also, Al Gore is a senior adviser to Google.
Now, I'm not playing a partisan finger-pointing game. But these kinds of "censorship" tactics give the appearance of "evil" worse than that which they are trying to avoid, IMO. Especially when there seems to be political motives. If some news site posts factual news, real honest truth, then I don't see how you can object to it on any basis just because you don't happen to like it. That holds whether the truth hurts the political Right or the political Left.
Talk v. Action (Score:3, Insightful)
It will boil down to which is more important, profits or ethics. They're a publically held company which makes me think ethics won't win.
Re:Good for Brin! (Score:2, Insightful)
However, as long as there are companies who don't care (Microsoft, Yahoo etc.) it really doesn't matter all that much. In general morality is punished by the market. That's why Capitalism is an inherently amoral system. All it takes is one company to take a sleazy path and then that's the way they all go along with or go out of business. That's all assuming, of course, that there isn't some huge movement on the part of the American people leading to restrictive legislation.
Re:Good for Brin! (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking a moral path is not about always being right. It is about always striving to be right & taking the care to reevaluate situations based on the current and future situations. I'm just glad there are still companies who know the M word.
Re:Good for Brin! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Shareholders? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unbelievably, the choice between "Do Evil" and "Do no Evil" is irrelevant as Google is obliged by law to follow the shareholders interests above everything else.
Sad, sad, sad state of affairs, where a company is required by law to do what many consider to be immoral.
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets look at this a bit more rationally. Google provides a search service - arguably the best in the world - for the internet. I would call this 'good' and I think many would agree. China, however, has laws which make it illegal for Google to display results to certain searches properly. They "ask " Google to comply.
Google now has effectively two options. Comply and censor some searches, or don't comply and not be allowed use by anybody in China.
Compliance: Google provides a 'slightly broken' search system to the residents of China. They do, however, note on their site that the results may have been limited due to state laws.
Non-Compliance: Google would not be usable at all in China.
I would say that Google is doing 'less good' than they would if results were not censored. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that their actions themselves are 'evil.' The actions of the state of China *are*, however, evil. But doing 'less good' when a state is forcing your hand is *hardly* evil.
Now if google employees were told to 'gas' members of the population, we're talking something very different. 'Gassing' people is evil, not 'less good'.
What is everyone do mad about? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying Google can truly do no evil, I simply do not think they have done any evil here, not to merit the criticsm they have received for their actions at least.
Re:Good for Brin! (Score:1, Insightful)
Google has done well to integrate their ethical standards into their business plan, so the two views of the "morals vs. money" argument aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
-FireMonkey
Re:Good for Brin! (Score:3, Insightful)
And it's up to all of us to make sure that good morals = good business.
Re:What about US censorship? (Score:2, Insightful)
If an when obeying a law (which may or may not be evil) causes you to do evil, you have done evil. The law is not a "get out of evil free" card.
Re:Good for Brin! (Score:5, Insightful)
There really is no externally observable difference between morality and publicity in this case. Their motto is "don't be evil." So they've set up their business so that being evil will generate a disproportionate amount of bad publicity. They've organized everything so that morality and publicity are inextricable: more so than in ordinary businesses. That in itself is admirable. But in the end, why does it matter what their internal motivations are? Why do you care? If we reward companies that do good and punish those that do bad, more will do good. If we punish those that do good with cynicism then there is no (business) reason for them to do good.
Re:Why is it Google's job to reform China? (Score:4, Insightful)
And before this discussion degenerates into WWII analogies, remember that Google is just a damn search engine and what's being repressed are just frigging web pages. No human is being abused or tortured by Google's actions.
Just doing business. Only following orders. Caught up with the mob. It's only the Communists. Too young to know better. To old to think straight. How many other excuses are there?
Bottom Line. Google are in bed with those dictators. Sure, maybe not every night of the week, but most nights. They're making money by colluding with a totalitarian state. No amount of excuses, handwringing, poignant apologies or clever excuses is going to change this fact.
If Google could not make money in China, they would never have sacraficed their oh so precious principles. But when faced with the mountains of riches on offer to them by simply caving into demands contrary to their stated values, they caved. Oh how they caved. They sold the good ship "Don't be evil" up the river and set sail for the high seas of profit, to return holds bursting with yuan and Party contacts. They caved, caved hard.
You want to keep making excuses for them, fine. While you're at it, make some excuses for arms dealers that sell to "choppn' off heads n' shit" third world dictators. Make some more for companies that forced bonded labourers and their children to toil for the sake of business. And don't forget to make some for yourself.
Re:Good for Brin! (Score:2, Insightful)
Almost everything is shades of grey when it comes to working with China. Google could chose not to work with China because of their censorship and then no one wins. Google could say "Nuts to you, China! We're coming in and not censoring anything! Viva la revolucion!" and quickly be booted out of China - again, no one wins. Or Google could agree to a contract they might not be completely comfortable with (but really - who actually is comfortable doing business with China anymore?) and hopefully get some information to the masses. Why is it evil if they happen to be making a buck at the same time?
I don't understand when it became evil to be profitable.
Re:Why is it Google's job to reform China? (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you think dictators get to be dictators in the first place? Business is not just business.
Re:It all makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh? they weren't denying censoring searches, it was written in plain text (chinese though) on the frigging result pages.
What they were denying was that it was evil, or that "bringing limited informations" was a worse evil than "not bringing any information at all". And I, for one, agreed with google on that one: most chinese don't care that their search results are censored, as long as Google only censors it's chinese-based services and clearly states that the results are filtered it can only bring a better content and a better awareness to the chinese.
If tomorrow my own country decided to start filtering information, I'd be hella glad if Google kept on feeding me with (filtered) search result if it told me that the results were filtered.
Re:Good for Brin! (Score:3, Insightful)
The less moral? They explicitely state that search results were filtered out at the very top of each page that should've hold censored results for god's sake. And for non-filtered results they bring the google quality of searches and size of index to China, which is in my book a very good thing indeed.
What's left to the chinese once Google pulls out? Baidu, the chinese-gov-shoes-licker, Yahoo who helps imprison bloggers and MSN whose staff takes down blogs without even a warning mail? Woohoo, i'm sure that google pulling out would help the chinese people a lot... not...
The best approach (Score:3, Insightful)
Should China's firewall decide to censor certain portions of the portal, or certain search terms, thats not a big deal; that's China's responsibility.
This means:
A) Google doesn't _really_ have to pull out; they just have to run their operations off-shore (from China).
B) Google doesn't have to actively work to circumvent Chinese law. That would be illegal. Rather, Google provides Chinese language search results to the whole world, and China is reponsible for filtering content at the ISP level.
C) Savvy internet users in China may be able to circumvent the law, similar to the way they current use proxies to get at unfiltered English language results.
This paints Google as a bastion of freedom, while still maintaining best-possible service in the Chinese language, and dumping all the responsibility of censoring to China's state-run ISPs.
In case anyone cares.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Rest of world: http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen+squar
China: http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen+square [google.cn]
I'd rather see google pull out than participate in such a blatant and upsetting removal of knowledge.
Re:Shareholders? (Score:4, Insightful)
Moral and Profitable and not opposites (Score:3, Insightful)
I like to use a swimming analogy. We're all in an infinite sea, with no shores and no bottom. To stay afloat (alive), you've got to do something that keeps you from sinking. The obvious answer here is "swim!", but consider that you could also hang off of a couple other people, or if you've got dense enough masses of people around, climb on top of them and get yourself clear out of the water. In this analogy, swimming is doing anything good and productive that keeps you afloat. A lone swimmer not near anyone else would be like a subsistence farmer. Helping those who can't swim, holding them up (so long as you're not drowning yourself), is doing a supererogatory deed, going beyond the call of duty to do good. Hanging off of other people is bad (though their helping to keep you up is good), and walking all over them is clearly bad.
But why are those things good or bad? Simple: if everyone were to hang off of everyone else, and nobody was swimming, we'd all drown. Morals are by definition meant to be universal codes of behavior, so something is immoral if and only if, if everyone were to do that, the results would be bad. It follows from this that the only reason anyone ever does anything immoral is because they're being short-sighted: walking all over people seems good for you in the short term, but in the big picture you're giving yourself a small gain at the expense of an overall greater loss across the whole mass of people, including yourself. If everyone were to do that you'd be screwed; the only reason it seems good at all in the short term is by virtue of all those hard-working swimmers you're walking over.
The thing I don't quite get is that, while humans have an excuse to be short-sighted since the shit quite often won't hit the fan within their lifetime, corporations are potentially immortal and so I'd think that they would be the longest-planning, most moral entities around, looking out for the economic well-being of the world. In some sense they are, with the pervasive pressure from above for the working class to work harder, but the strongest leadership is by example, and the more people and corporations we have making it rich by riding over others, the more the next generation is going to avoid working if at all possible to try and be a rich corporate executive and/or shareholder instead... and then, once enough people are resting comfortably on the shoulders of a few exhausted swimmers, they'll all drown; or at least, once those swimmers drown, or throw the fatasss freeriders off, they'll all have to start swimming again.
I guess the answer is that corporations are still being run by humans, which are usually short-sighted creatures, and who don't care if their corporations die eventually so long as it makes them rich in the short term. But maybe, to bring it back on topic, some people aren't so short-sighted and want to do something that will last beyond their own lives. I know I certainly do; to establish an enduring legacy, make some long-lasting positive impact on the world, is the closest thing to immortality anyone can achieve. Maybe the folks in charge of Google want that too. And they've actually got an opportunity here to do so. So don't discount all claims of morality out-of-hand by saying that they're only driven by profit. It can be both, and must be both if you're looking at the longest long run, which all of these immortal corporations ought to be doing.
Re:Why now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Given what little we've heard about the internal debates at Google, they were crystal clear that it was a bad idea but decided the alternatives were even worse:
Problem. Chinese people lack access to non-governmental information
Answer. Do something that results in their government shutting down Google altogether.
Should you choose your actions based on their effects or on your principles? Ethicists could argue either side of that until you ran out of the room in boredom. Google chose, or tried to choose, the greatest good for the greatest number. We can all guess what rms would have done in their place.
Re:Why now? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you actually had any morals, you would have realized that in the first place.
You mean you've never done anything wrong, that you knew was wrong at the time, and then later realized that you just can't live with it and have to fix it?
I'm not saying that's what's going on here, I have no idea whether or not Google is actually going to change it's approach to China, and I have no idea what the real motivations will be if they do, but I think it's important to remember that decisions are made by people, and even very moral people make mistakes. The way you can tell that they're very moral people is that they can't just leave it at that, they fix their mistakes if at all possible. It takes a great deal of moral courage to admit that you made a mistake and did a morally reprehensible thing, but admitting to it is a prerequisite to correcting it.
In this particular situation, I can see how the mistake could be made, pretty easily. The moral question isn't as clear cut as many here seem to think. Which will really help the Chinese people more, a censored search service or no search service? I also think Google made the wrong decision, but I can see how easy it would be to justify the one they made, particularly given the high incentive to do business in China.
If Google ends their censorship in China, it may well be for purely business reasons, and the moral issues may just be a smokescreen, but to presume that *must* be the case is excessively cynical. Don't attribute to malice (or evil) what can be adequately explained by incompetence (or error).
Perspectives (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is what is the right action on googles part in this situation. If you look at the issue of ethical company practices, it is correct for a company to follow the laws of the country that its doing business in.
But in this case the law has to do with censorship and freedom of speech. Each culture has its own perspectives on freedom of speech. Even in the US, speech is not completly free (libel, slander, media gatekeepers, political correctness, hate speech).
China has its own ideas of what free speech means. Sure many people in the US and Europe dont agree with it. But at the same time, there hasnt been a revolution in China to change that. Its not Google's or any corporations job to change that. They are responsible to thier shareholders and responsible for following the law where ever they do buisness. Free speech in China will come, when the people of China want it.
Re:Why now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Should you choose your actions based on their effects or on your principles? Ethicists could argue either side of that until you ran out of the room in boredom. Google chose, or tried to choose, the greatest good for the greatest number. We can all guess what rms would have done in their place.
But you have to know, givent the history of China and its government, that you're going to need to sell a part of your soul to operate there. I think it boils down to Google being in too much of a rush to "conquer" China before anyone else did, no doubt driven by financial realities. Yet there comes a point where you have to ask: is our soul worth that much? Do the easy dollars China represents compensate for facilitating the grip of a regime which works very hard to limit its peoples access to information? That's a puzzler when you're one of the largest, if not the largest, purveyors of information in the world.
Google should not have been in such a rush; a better strategy would have been to let Microsoft and Yahoo rush in and get thumped around, then learn from their experiences before diving in themselves. It might have saved them some long-overdue soul-searching.
Re:It all makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Now did that wording show up on the chinese version of google after results started being censored?
pulling out more moral than staying out (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider this situation: Google abruptly ends service in China, replacing their main page with a brief message that says something like, "Google is halting search service in china because they are unable to comply with Chinese law." They could post this with no explanation, and then later they could post an explanation that gave their moral stance, with justification by example (I.E. Tiananmen Square). This would be blocked quickly of course, but if their original posting created sufficient mystery, maybe chinese would be inclined to research the issue, and I assume some would see the explanation, and be able to spread the word. Creating mystery is a good way to create awareness.
Being a popular search engine in China gets them more visibility than if they'd decided to stay out of China from the beginning.
However, maybe causing public unrest is amoral. Destabilizing the Chinese government is no good unless the people really have good idea of what they'd replace it with, how they'd do it, and if they'd really have the commitment to see it through.
The one of the Chinese government's roles is to protect people against themselves, and I think they do this fairly well. Are lack of political freedoms worth a revolution that could severely reduce the quality of life in the country? I imagine it would be much worse than Iraq, if the leadership fell.
I confess to being a google apologist/fanboy/whatever. I think only the innocently idealistic would found a company with the corporate slogan "do no evil". I don't think their self-censoring presence in china is amoral.
I don't really believe in morality. It's just another banner for people to wave to justify their actions.
I believe in trying to be good and in reflection on past actions, but I don't believe in the condensing good down into general principles. People make rules, and they turn off their brain.
And you can talk about short-term consequences of your actions, and you can talk about long term consequences, but human lives are short when taken into the life of all humanity, and we haven't reached any sort of conclusion where we can sit back and reflect on what was truely good, and what was truely bad. Maybe the Holocaust provided a terrible lesson that will stay in the cultural conscious and prevent possible future ethnic cleansings. And so it would be good. It could be both good and bad.
Damn, this is my most indugent, rambling post ever.
Re:Shareholders? (Score:2, Insightful)
>to determine what "shareholder interest" is. A large number
>of shareholders are interested in stock price and dividends
>but there are people who determine their investments beyond
>stock earning power.
Indeed. But on a simpler level, Evil is just bad...and companies are wise to steer clear of it altogether.
Sans the ability to travel to the future (and/or find a reasonably accurate *and* affordable psychic) the officers, directors, et al, of a public firm are not obligated to "act in such manner as to secure the best possible outcome" -- such a demand necessitates that said officers/directors be capable of: (1) knowing or determining in advance every possible result (and side-effect) that would inevitably stem from a decision (or series of decisions); and (2) quantifying in some meaningful way all the "positive" and "negative" effects entailed by each disparate result, so that some form of "Ethical Calculus" could be performed and conclusively (objectively) tell us which of the N solutions was "in the best interest of the Shareholders."
I think it's safe to say that with N>1, above, we move into nonlinear space rather quickly.
Basically, it comes down to this:
1. As an officer or director of a firm, you have a fiduciary duty to represent the Shareholders' best interests -- you do this by avoiding conflicts of interest, practicing all appropriate due dilligence (eg, when researching/considering a significant decision), and then finally, acting or voting in a manner that you believe (in good faith) will best benefit the Shareholders you represent.
2. This is NOT the same thing as what some of the previous posts have said, eg, "Google execs must always act on (capture) any and all immediate/obvious potential revenue streams, blindly exploit every opportunity for profit, etc, because they have a responsibity to enhance Shareholder ROI, every second of every day, no matter what the cost."
Since the Nazi analogy has already been used (lol), I'll try to go with a more creative one: At some point, Exxon execs had to decide whether to purchase Nice Safe Expensive Ships or Cheap-Ass Ships of Questionable Quality. Hindsight is 20/20, but put yourself in the shoes of the executives who had to decide between purchasing and maintaining the NSESs and the CASQQs.
Purchasing the NSESs would cut deep into Exxon's profit margin, which was Bad For Shareholders. So it's an automatic "no," right? Perhaps, but more likely, the end result was more a function of a risk-weighted cost/benefit analysis. Ie, "What's the worst case scenario? How likely is such an outcome? And if something catastrophic did happen, how much would it cost to 'fix' (cleanup, repair the ships, PR, etc) said catastrophe?"
Every decision involves potential risks, losses, and gains -- and many of these are identified in advance, which is great. But it's the potential risks/losses you *don't* forsee that nail you -- eg, the real cost of the cleanup effort, the loss of disgusted Exxon customers who *never* came back after the incident, opening the door for BP's to later capitalize with their "green" quasi-envioronmentally "at least we're better than Exxon" marketing campaigns, etc.
Exxon saw the environment as a tool, not an ally (or something worth protecting) -- if the Valdez had never struck that Iceberg, then maybe (!) you could arguablly claim that the decision to increase shareholder wealth (vs "waste it" on environmental protections that nobody would ever see or appreciate, and would probably never contribute to the bottom line, as far as they knew) was totally right
In fact, this probably *is* the correct course of action
Can't enjoy unless perfect? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can insult the President, swear at the VP and still go home to your family. Try that in another country.
While the U.S. is slowly dying, it has been a wonderful place. Sadly the Republic turned into a Democracy and finally now into Lawyer and Mob rule. Sad days are ahead but looking back, we have changed the world. Slavery, woman's rights, equality, free speech.....thanks to a bunch of rebels in boats.