Google shareholders, on the request of the board of Google, have rejected two proposals that would compelled Google to follow more stringent human rights policies in places such as China. 1

Google provides the people of China with a censored version of the popular search engine due to the request of the Chinese government.

Google claims that by providing some services, is better than none at all.

Co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin, stated that

Google has a far superior track record than other search companies with respect to making information freely available

We had reservations that the restrictions we had to live by were not consistent with our policies. But we were able to have an implementation that honored many of our principles.

Our primary goal in countries like China isn't to generate as much revenue as possible. We could abandon it tomorrow and not have a material effect on revenue. Our goal has been what's the most positive we can do. 2

While Google can at least claim that they have not handed over information at the request of the Chinese government like Yahoo did, they have compromised their goals for starting up their search engine.

For those who aren't aware of how Google came to be and the issues that human rights organisations such as Amnesty International are complaining about, I will give a very quick overview.

Google was created to index the information of the world that provided relevant results to users, quickly as possible. Money was never an issue with the owners (Sergey Brin and Larry Page) in the beginning because they created Google for no other reason but their own personal satisfaction. They wanted to create a service that was useful and that was not evil (hence the "Don't Be Evil" motto). Google saw being evil as Microsoft's major flaw. It was only once they were bankrolled by venture capitalists, that they were forced to hire a CEO (Eric Schmidt) and implement a business model to generate money (advertisements in search results). Once Google started to take off, they were forced to publicly list on the stock exchange and in doing so, are forced by law to ensure that they do not do anything to jeopardise the value of their stock. Even though Sergey Brin stated that by not providing the people of China with a search engine will not effect revenue, in the current market crisis in the US, it would be very unwise to do so and Google are more than aware of that fact.

Google originally had a presence in China with their servers located still in the US (Google at this stage was the #1 search engine in China). But the Chinese government would not allow uncensored information to be accessed by their citizens and the Chinese government forced Google to create an office in China and host all of their servers in the country. With the servers now in China, Google now had to comply with Chinese law. When Google accepted this offer, Google effectively agreed to censor the internet to the people of China. Subsequently, Google has dropped down a few places in China and is no longer the #1 search engine.

Google is in a very tough position. Once they were publicly listed on the stock exchange, the motto of "Don't be evil" becomes very blurred. I do not think it is humanly possible to create money and not be evil in the process if you're company is publicly listed on the stock exchange. The company is no longer completely under your control and your interests become purely for the stockholders.

However, Sergey Brin and Larry Page should remember why they started their search engine in the first place and remember that money should be secondary to human rights. They should uncensor the content delivered from Google to the people of China or no longer be present in the country and remain true to their original ethos.

- Beju -