Mads ([info]mmk) wrote,
@ 2006-01-29 23:58:00
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shock
Two things that came out of the blue and surprised me this week. In Davos, when asked about censorship in search engines in China, Google CEO Eric Schmidt made some excellent points, which finally led to :

"We even made an evil scale and decided it was more evil not to go in than to go in," Schmidt said.
On hearing that, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates muttered into his microphone: "That's do less evil.

In response, Schmidt said: "I don't want to get caught up in semantics."
What a brilliant point. The motto was to do NO evil. Switching tracks, in a discussion about RMS, a friend remarked:

> He used to dance to upbeat Balkan folk music
Yet another reason why cooperation with RMS is impossible.
All tongue in cheek of course, but such a splendid image. Just imagine someone, refusing to dance and/or protesting, for example that someone did not call it music from Albania/Bosnia and Herzegovina/Bulgaria/Croatia/Greece/Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia/Serbia and Montenegro/Turkey but however called it Balkan folk music.

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changes to Googles webpage
(Anonymous)
2006-01-30 10:03 am UTC (link)
I find it quite disturbing that a company first lays out guidelines, principles, code-of-conduct for themselves and later edits them to accommodate new (attractive) business models. I've seen it even with privacy statement, but at least the companies there told all their customers (via email) and explained the changes in detail.
Not Google on censorship, see http://battellemedia.com/archives/002271.php
Personally I don't mind them censoring, it's law in China and the government blocked their IP for months (on government computers). But then they shouldn't write it into the principles in the first place.
mtm

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update to previous comment
(Anonymous)
2006-01-30 10:04 am UTC (link)
just saw that Jeremy picks on the same topic with better links
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/006191.html

(Reply to this)

Look around.
[info]shankariyer
2006-01-30 06:14 pm UTC (link)
"We even made an evil scale and decided it was more evil not to go in than to go in," Schmidt said.

On hearing that, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates muttered into his microphone: "That's do less evil".

Is this a correct way to see this ? Just because other companies( Microsoft/MSN or Yahoo or AskJeeves ) doesn't have such a statement, are they doing good ? They're in there, have accepted to bend already.

Yes, outside of semantics - why go so far, AOL, MSN and Yahoo had accepted to share search information to DOJ
http://news.com.com/Feds+take+porn+fight+to+Google/2100-1030_3-6028701.html

It'd not have seen the light of the day, until one raised the hand, leaving alone the outcome of that argument.

Why didn't they stand up and say 'no'. This is a free country, supporter of democracy. All those companies had user privacy policy etc. etc. etc.

The reality is "politics is politics" and you got to bend when it comes to your turn.

Schimdt is right - its a call to either go in or stay out. Ofcourse, this could also be argued as an arrangment for them to get in more searches/$$.

That and others set aside, the real issue is the clash of the internet-culture between the two countries and differences, just as they're not adjacscent in a flattened map.

As before, the only hope for now is somebody, thro' some means people over there get to see the same content as everyone else, without 'any' intervension. Until then, the counter on these kind of cases has just incremented again...

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[info]thaths
2006-01-31 12:04 am UTC (link)
I didn't know you were in Saints.

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Evil Schmevil
(Anonymous)
2006-01-31 01:49 am UTC (link)
Google staying out of China on principle would deprive 1/3 of the world's population of access to a great search engine. It's easy to stand on principle when doing so has no effect on you personally. I don't see why people get so bent out of shape about Google playing by China's rules of censorship as a cost of doing business there. From what I've seen, most of the people doing the complaining don't seem to have a horse in that race. Now that the company has shareholders, leaving money on the table requires more justification than a mission statement developed when David and Jerry were fresh out of Stanford.

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: Evil Schmevil
(Anonymous)
2006-01-31 07:41 am UTC (link)
David and Jerry is another company.... Yahooooo!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

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