Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Evil.
Not evil.
UPDATE: This should have been in here before: Both Yahoo and Microsoft Network (MSN) are far worse in their complicity in Chinese censorship than Google is. Reporting indicates that Google makes reference (in Chinese, which I can't read) to the fact that the results were filtered. Neither Yahoo nor MSN, the second and third most popular search engines, make any reference to their filtering. The Chinese firewall technology would work whether or not the American search engines were complicit. A Chinese user would simply be presented with search results that were blocked by the country's firewall. An annoying, but constant reminder that the society was not a free one. And that is enough to make Google's (and MSN's and Yahoo's) positions qualify as evil.
Not evil.
UPDATE: This should have been in here before: Both Yahoo and Microsoft Network (MSN) are far worse in their complicity in Chinese censorship than Google is. Reporting indicates that Google makes reference (in Chinese, which I can't read) to the fact that the results were filtered. Neither Yahoo nor MSN, the second and third most popular search engines, make any reference to their filtering. The Chinese firewall technology would work whether or not the American search engines were complicit. A Chinese user would simply be presented with search results that were blocked by the country's firewall. An annoying, but constant reminder that the society was not a free one. And that is enough to make Google's (and MSN's and Yahoo's) positions qualify as evil.
