Google = Nazis

The problem is of an ideological nature, no? Anyway, it's not very surprising is it.

The company argues it can play a more useful role make a lot more money in China by participating than by boycotting it, despite the compromises involved.

o wai

There's money in them thar paedophiles

Am I misunderstanding this? Wasn't google being blocked from China before? And this was the only way they would be allowed TO MAKE AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF MONEY?

Yeah, sure

t41w4n r00l5 0k!!!!!!!!!

xpost

They probably DO feel that they're making a step towards transparency by at least SAYING what has been censored. But it's a company not a civil rights group, of course their main objective is profit. And yes they want to give a Chinese users a quicker slightly more extensive service, but only ultimately to protect/enhance their own reputation and thus, oh, make more money.

somewhat censored google with information loopholes that the PRC will never be able to block fully.

or

no google.

Take your time.

Certainly a company in Mountain View CA can succeed where the Taiwanese and US Navy don't dare to tread.

No!

DING DING DING!

OMG WTF corporation deciding to make money by following laws but poss also make changes in the later game holy shit.

Is this really beyond a couple of you? And by a couple of you I mostly mean a handful of people who don't actually have log in names and who I've never seen before who are reaming Dan for some reason. And RJG, today, only.

i don't know about "inalienable" -- that gets into an absolutist argument that is as much semantics as anything -- but i think they're important human rights, and worth protecting and fighting for.

>>advocating for human rights in china doesn't mean saying, "you should be more like america" (although frankly at the moment that would be a big improvement).

How "have your cake and eat it, too" of you!

haha, is it controversial to think the u.s. system of constitutional government is preferable to the chinese one-party-rule authoritarian model? how ethnocentric of me!

Reading comprehension is so difficult. YA RLY.

xpost Dan I don't know what you are going on about with this imperialism you're right to a point but now you are pushing it way too far to make a point.

because he's an asshole?

The point I tried to make is that the allegedly culture-neutral point being advanced is anything but culture-neutral; it is heavily informed by the values inherent in our (very similar) cultures and there are many explicit/implicit "my culture is better, let me make your decisions for you" arguments being put forward by the "liberal" side of this debate. People then decided to be really fucking stupid so I decided to just sarcastically parrot back the ridiculous taken-to-the-extreme positions that were being ascribed to me because there's really no hope of actual debate at this point because no one (including me, I'm guessing) is willing to take the extra step of looking at their position from a point of criticism in order to identify its weakenesses or danger spots. I recognize that there are a lot of privileges that I have as an American that are not present in China. I am completely, totally, deliriously happy to have those privileges. I do not think that the fact that I am in America and all of the Chinese people in China are in China (wow what a fucking retarded clause, but anyway) means that the people of China should never, ever have access to the same privileges that I enjoy. This isn't stopping people on this thread from doing their best to call me a facist without actually invoking the word, so, you know, fuck it. I'm going to do nothing but insult people and poke hornets nests because no one (including me) likes getting called on their bullshit.

but it does get into how comfortable you are espousing "universal" values. i basically think some things should be universal, self-determination among them, and it's hard to have political self-determination without free speech. so i don't have any problem, myself, saying that i would prefer governments, corporations and individuals to work toward greater freedom of expression. google can make a case that what they're doing in china will actually lead to more freedom down the road, and i think that's possible. i also think it's possible and maybe likely that along the way, google is likely to complicit in some violations of those freedoms. that they'll be making money while doing that is not very morally appealing, and is at least worth acknowledging even if you conclude that it's worth the trade-off in the long run.

This week, we are all singling out Google for doing something Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL have all already done.

I smell a rat.

I think it's meaningless to talk about values outside of the context of culture. The aim here should be the creation and nuturing of a subset culture that everyone can or should ascribe to; the danger is that, since we're ostensibly the ones in the position to set the parameters of this culture, we are also in a position of cultural power and have to watch out for pronouncements that blanket-condemn other cultures or exclude them from the get-go because their value system is so opposed to ours.

There is also the question of what precisely gives us the right to tell another culture that they are wrong; of course we are going to think they are wrong because we grew up with a set of values that are opposed to the values shown to us by various media sources and our own personal travels, but what makes our position the "correct" one? It has to be something beyond "we have the money" or "we have the power" or "because we said so", doesn't it? I mean, you could argue "because it hurts fewer people" but then you start running into the situations I alluded to upthread; which culture is better, the one where everyone gets food, housing, clothes and medical care but information is restricted and you can't criticize the government or the one where everyone gets to say whatever they want and learn whatever they want as they starve to death? My obvious reaction is that neither of those is particularly desirable but what is the "best" one? How do you determine what factors cause the least amount of negative impact on people?

I don't think anyone on this thread (including myself) is in a position to talk sensibly on the subject (at least not based on what I've read today).

January 25th: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4647398.stm

Call it a conspiracy theory if you will. I am truly astounded more people aren't commenting on this.

well, a major argument for universal human rights is that societies that allow for basic human rights also tend to be better at providing all the other things you're talking about. the countries with the highest standard of living are also representative democracies of one kind or another. and sure, there's a lot of variation even among the industrialized democracies, but on pretty much any scale you want to use, you're on average better off living in those countries than anywhere else. which doesn't mean that everyone in china or vietnam or iran would rather be in poughkeepsie, obviously. but probably a lot of people in those places would like to be able to live in china or vietnam or iran and have basic legal and economic protections from the state.

i mean, ok, we as americans or westerners arguably don't have the right to force democracy on anyone else, but by the same token, do the ruling elite in any of these countries have the right to force authoritarian rule on their populations? like i said, i'm not sure authoritarianism is exactly a cultural value. which is not to say that everyone who lives in those countries would rather have a democracy. hell, there was some recent survey or russians that showed that 37 percent of them thought stalin had done a good job -- about the same as george w.'s current approval rating. but knowing that some percentage of people in any given population might prefer authoritarianism just makes me think it's that much more important for those of us who don't want authoritarianism (which at least seems to be everyone on this thread) to advocate for the alternatives.

and xpost: i was happy google stood up to the bush administration. i also think it makes sense as a business decision, just like their moves in china. they're protecting the integrity of their product.

I trust Google to provide better, albeit still censored, services to the Chinese than their other search engines. If what you said is true, that proves me right. So, isn't it better that the Chinese would get that than not get that?

well done

U.S. technology has been used to block, censor Net for years

The guy's point is that American companies have been selling web-filtering technology to more-or-less repressive regimes for years, and that it's hypocritical to single out Google and Yahoo for their dealings with China. For instance a California-based company called Fortinet apparently sells web-blocking technology to Myanmar.

FUCK FUCKING SHIT

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-google-reader.html

YOU MOTHERFUCKERS. YOU ASSHOLES.

Your google reader blogs

really annoyed of google subbing words in for my searches. i searched for a headline that had the word "rape" in it, and it showed me results with "sex" instead of "rape." wtf

in the results, the word "sex" was bolded as if i had searched for it. i realize this isn't a new thing but srsly wtf i know what im searching for! its hard to apply old googling skills under this new regime

I'm testing DuckDuckGo, so far it's quite cool!

it's not personalized, kinda feels like the old web - in a good way

(using the firefox add-on)