[Dean's World] Aziz P: Don't be evil ...

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Aziz P:
Don't be evil ...
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1149690518.shtml


   if you can help it, insamuch as any enterprise run by ordinary human
   beings instead of angeles descended from heaven, can avoid being so.

   Case in point: Sergey Brin is fully aware of the moral compromise that
   Google made and [1]addresses the point directly:

     Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged Tuesday the
     dominant Internet company has compromised its principles by
     accommodating Chinese censorship demands. He said Google is
     wrestling to make the deal work before deciding whether to reverse
     course.

     Meeting with reporters near Capitol Hill, Brin said Google had
     agreed to the censorship demands only after Chinese authorities
     blocked its service in that country. Google's rivals accommodated
     the same demands â which Brin described as "a set of rules that we
     weren't comfortable with" â without international criticism, he
     said.

     "We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but
     provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more
     effective service and perhaps make more of a difference," Brin
     said.

     Brin also addressed Internet users' expectations of privacy in an
     era of increased government surveillance, saying Americans
     misunderstand the limited safeguards of their personal electronic
     information.

     "I think it's interesting that the expectations of people with
     respect to what happens to their data seems to be different than
     what is actually happening," he said.

     Google has battled the U.S. Justice Department in court seeking to
     limit the amount of information the government can get about users'
     Internet searches. It also says it has not participated in any
     programs with the National Security Agency to collect Internet
     communications without warrants.

     [...]

     Google's China-approved Web service omits politically sensitive
     information that might be retrieved during Internet searches, such
     as details about the 1989 suppression of political unrest in
     Tiananmen Square. Its agreement with China has provoked
     considerable criticism from human rights groups.

     "Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense," Brin said.

     The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders said Tuesday that
     Google's main Web site, http://www.google.com, was no longer
     accessible in most Chinese provinces due to censorship efforts, and
     that it was completely inaccessible throughout China on May 31.

     Brin said Google is trying to improve its censored search service,
     Google.cn, before deciding whether to reverse course. He said
     virtually all the company's customers in China use the non-censored
     service.

     "It's perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say,
     'Look, we're going to stand by the principle against censorship and
     we won't actually operate there.' That's an alternate path," Brin
     said. "It's not where we chose to go right now, but I can sort of
     see how people came to different conclusions about doing the right
     thing."

References

   1. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060606/ap_on_hi_te/google_censorship