[ILUG] Mother of God!

[Colm MacCarthaigh]

On Tue, Feb 14, 2006 at 05:45:36PM +0000, Jordi Jané wrote:
> I think people are being really hard with Google, while letting some
> other search engine get away with murder (and I hope that's not
> literal!).

Google claim do not do evil. That set up expectations, and they've
breached those expectations in the eyes of many. It's badly tarnished an
otherwise stellar image. 

Hyprocricy always attracts attention, people love pointing it out.
That's a big part of it, but also when Google sell out Civil Liberties
it sends a message to people that non-evil corporateism just can't work,
even Google can't manage it. That's a real heart-breaker for some, and
to some extent people feel genuinely betrayed by this, or by the
fucked-up world or whatever. That's another part of it.

The attention is disproportionate though, and the actions of Google's
competitors are indeed worse.
> 
> I agree that Google could have done better, or that an alliance would
> be a good idea. However, I don't see this as a viable option for 2
> reasons:
> 
> - Google is not the first one to get into the chinese market
> - It's competitor will be only too happy to see Google not getting
> involved at all

Indeed, and so what? The only way this works is if you consider profit
more important than human rights.

Even if Google were threatened with commercial annilihation by not
signing up to the Chinese terms - and that just isn't close to being
true - it would still be wrong.

On the other hand by building up attractive and innovative services
unavailable from within the great firewall, Google could - at least in
some way - contribute to a quicker pace to its eventual decline.

-- 
Colm MacCárthaigh                        Public Key: colm+pgp at stdlib.net