Comment Profit motive (Score 1) 158
The argument "We are compelled by our mission [to] provide information to everyone, and [China is] 20 percent of the world's population," is of course a defensible argument but the argument is purposefully not the full argument and meant to obfuscate from very primary goals that Google has. If they had been transparent with the motivation for profit and deepening global market dominance I could at least say they're being honest about their intentions and support that honesty (not the actual decision to create a censored version). They act as if they're balancing all values here without mentioning what were likely the key drivers for revisiting the Chinese market.
