Google: China decision painful but right

By Ben Hirschler

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – Google Inc. co-founder
Sergey Brin said his company’s decision to self-censor its
Chinese search system followed a change of heart over how best
to foster the free flow of information.

Google said on Tuesday it will block politically sensitive
terms on its new China search site and not offer e-mail, chat
and blog publishing services, which authorities fear can become
flashpoints for social or political protest. Those actions go
further than many of its biggest rivals in China.

“I didn’t think I would come to this conclusion — but
eventually I came to the conclusion that more information is
better, even if it is not as full as we would like to see,”
Brin told Reuters in an interview in Switzerland.

Google, whose high-minded corporate motto is “Don’t be
evil,” had previously refused to comply with Internet
censorship demands by Chinese authorities, rules that must be
met in order to locate business operations inside China — the
world’s No. 2 Internet market.

“I know a lot of people are upset by our decision but it is
something we have deliberated for a number of years,” Brin said
from the sidelines of the World Economic Forum conference.

At least for now, Google will offer just four of its core
services in China — Web site and image search, Google News and
local search.

The voluntary concessions laid out on Tuesday by Google
parallel some of the self-censorship already practiced there by
global rivals such as Yahoo and Microsoft, as well as domestic
sites.

“There is no question. Google would tell you that going
into China is about making money, not bringing democracy,” John
Palfrey, author of a study on Chinese Internet censorship and a
law professor at Harvard Law School, on Google’s action.

“The practical matter is that over the last couple of years
Google in China was censored — not by us but by the
government, via the ‘Great Firewall,”‘ said Brin. “It’s not
something I enjoy but I think it was a reasonable decision.”

In different political circumstances, Google already
notifies users of its German and French search services when it
blocks access to material such as banned Nazi sites in Europe.

“France and Germany require censorship for Nazi sites, and
the U.S. requires censorship based on the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DCMA). These various countries also have laws on
child pornography,” he said.

The DCMA law requires U.S. Internet service providers to
block access to Web sites violating copyrights on materials
such as music or movies.

“I totally understand that people are upset about it and I
think that is a reasonable point of view to take,” Brin said of
Google’s compromise in China.

(Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in San Francisco)