Google has admitted for the first time that it compromised its
principles when it entered the Chinese market and agreed to toe
Beijing’s strict line on censorship.
Speaking in Washington, Sergey Brin, Google’s billionaire
co-founder, said the company, which operates under the motto "do no
evil", had adopted "a set of rules that we weren’t comfortable with".
In a hint that Google could adjust its stance in China in the
future, he added: "Perhaps now the principled approach makes more
sense."
Google’s decision to launch its Chinese site, Google.cn, last year
met with a barrage of criticism when it emerged that search results for
politically sensitive topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre
would be censored.
The pact made between Google and China’s leaders led to the internet
company being branded "a megaphone for communist propaganda" at a US
Congressional hearing called after the move.
Critics including Reporters Without Borders, the press freedom
group, have called China "the world champion" of internet censorship.
The country has invested heavily in a sophisticated filtering system,
dubbed "The Great Firewall", which allows the authorities to search out
dissidents and block their sites.
Mr Brin said: "We felt that perhaps we could compromise our
principles but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and
be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference."
The lure of the massive Chinese market has also seen Google's
arch-rivals Microsoft and Yahoo! dragged into the controversy. In
particular, Yahoo! has been condemned for handing over e-mail details
that led to several outspoken Chinese bloggers being jailed.
However, it is questionable whether Google could afford to turn its back on China's explosive economy.
Yesterday, Times Online revealed how the company has struggled to compete
in businesses outside its core search service. Failures to break into
fields such as news and financial information could up the pressure on
Google to extend the reach of its search tool – already the world’s
most popular – into new territories.
In April, Google rebranded itself as "Gu Ge" - or "Harvesting
Song" - in China, a move it said demonstrated its commitment to
its controversial entry there. Speaking in Beijing at the time, Eric
Schmidt, Google's chief executive, said: "We believe that the decision
that we made to follow the law in China was absolutely the right one."
Commenting on the massive growth of the Chinese online advertising,
Mr Schmidt said: "I don’t know where [Chinese] revenue growth will be,
but it will obviously be large."
The attraction of Chinese cyberspace and its massive pool of
potential consumers for America's internet giants has long been
clear.
Dr Charles Zhang, the chief executive of Sohu.com, China's largest
web portal, said there are at least 150 million Chinese internet users,
and there could be as many as 200 million. Those figures would place
China neck-and-neck with the US in terms of internet users.
Mr Brin was in Washington to ask US senators to approve a plan that
would safeguard "net neutrality" – the current online system which
means all internet content is handled equally.
In meetings with Republican John McCain, a member of the Senate
committee that oversees telecoms issues, he argued against a system
that would allow telephone and cable companies to collect premium fees
from companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! for faster delivery
of their services
"The only way to have a fast lane that is useful – that people will pay a premium for – is if there are slow lanes," he said.
Did Google "do evil" by entering the Chinese market on Beijing’s terms? Have your say here.
