Like they say...$ talks and BS walks.

Have a great evening, Donnah.

In the end, their scruples meant nothing and they went for the bucks.

Okay what would you like, not give the Chinese access to Google? The Chinese government won't care and the people won't know. At least access to Google in some form (note that Google will mention when results are censored) will promote a more open society than what it's now.

Also this restriction of the Chinese government only applies to the Google server run in China. So the Chinese people can still get past the restriction by accessing the Google.com server in the US.

OK, John from Sunnyvale, would the Chinese not have been able to live without a Google in China? I think they'd have muddled along.

My problem is with Google agreeing to censor political speech in China.

As far the Chinese people being able to just go around the censorship, according to the linked article:

"Because of government barriers set up to suppress information, Google's China users previously have been blocked from using the search engine or encountered lengthy delays in response time."

It's just not right to become a part of something like that. I'm very disappointed in them.

Whenever Google does one of their iffy things like this, I always think of that "Simpsons" episode where Homer is talking to God and says, "If you agree, please send me no sign." Google has this...entitlement attitude towards whatever they do that, while I won't say they break laws or go full unethical (though with this China thing I think they are flat out wrong no matter their rationalizations), but it is an uncomfortable attitude. They seem to think that by them declaring something, everyone has opted in. Then, (as with their books program) as people actually discover -- and they have to discover for themselves because Google won't contact them to say what they are doing -- they have to go through the bother of opting out. As they move beyond web (again to the book scanning and other things), opting out becomes more than just a proper robots.txt file or a special header to prevent indexing.

What works for them, though, is that they are very good at making the right righteous public declarations to make the Slashdot crowd and the more reactionary EFF twitters glaze over when it comes to everything else. It's excellent marketing.

Might be because of their politics... and trying to appease their friends.

Ya, I have no love lost for them what so ever because actions speak louder than words.

Every wonder about the political correctness level of the images they use on holidays and other 'special' days?

Here's a link from Dog-Pundit to a powerful image with a Microsoft upgrade to reflect the current state of the art in China: http://dog-pundit.blogspot.com/2006/01/microsoft-and-red-chinese-for-latest.html

I guess it just floors me how western corporations are willing to compromise the free market that made them for limited access to a Chinese market that will not deliver it's full potential until it's people are free. The willing compromise of principle seems counter-productive as well as hypocritical, when thinking of Google's "Don't be Evil" slogan.

I used to be a big fan of Google until I read some months ago that they were willing to allow the PRC to dictate search results. I switched to Yahoo for that reason and also because I found that Google was not performing here in Korea, my new place of residence, as well as it had in others. It didn't take much research on my part to find that Yahoo and Microsoft have been helpful to the PRC in cracking down on Chinese dissidents. So I had to make some more changes. It is all very disappointing but thankfully, there are many search engine alternatives at this site: http://www.refdesk.com/newsrch.html
Some of them don't work well but others may surprise you. We are lucky to have choices when principle and/or performance don't meet our standards. Those of us that do live where the free market of ideas is accessible can send a message.