GethicsNew from the makers of "Gool"! It's "Gethics"!
By now most people have heard that Google has officially entered the Chinese market with google.cn. And that this decision is seen in the blogosphere as highly controversial because in doing so, Google has agreed to censor it's search results in accordance with the Chinese government's laws. Why is this such a big deal? Afterall, every foreign business that wishes to set up shop in China must agree to the Chinese government's censorship and other communist-style laws designed to oppress and control the populous. The big deal is that Google has always made itself out to be a sort of anti-Enron type company. A good guy that you can count on to always be good. One of their founding principles is "Don't be evil". Are they being 'evil'?
Everyone and their mom has on opinion on this. Google basically argues that they are being less evil by starting google.cn than if they didn't start google.cn. Providing 1/6 of the world's population with most but not all information is better than not providing them with anything at all. Classic utilitarian ethics. (I guess it makes sense that a company that was founded on an algorithm would boil things down to a simple equation of maximum benefit for the maximum number of people.) My problem with this decision making process is Google is essentially deciding what is best for the Chinese people. In their words,
Our continued engagement with China is the best (perhaps only) way for Google to help bring the tremendous benefits of universal information access to all our users there.Google feels it's in the Chinese people's best interest long term for Google to be there sooner rather than later (even in censored form)-and not only that, but that this is the BEST way for Google to help China progress. How many Chinese citizens did Google consult before coming to this conclusion? How much of this decision was influenced by the thinking, "if not us, then somebody else (read: Yahoo, MSN, etc.) will beat us to it"?
In other news...have you seen Google's stock this week?
posted by Andrew at 1.2.06
4 Comments:
Discussing china comes up from time to time. Issues like steal, farming, oil, religion and now google. I have experienced two schools of thought on the topic.
1) lets not deal with a country that has such little value for human rights. so we could impose sanctions to force them to see things our way (the western way) - Either play by our rules or don't play at all. Oh yeah quite basing your currency on the US dollar!!!
2) Any western influence is good. even the most minimum. If western companies can get into china then maybe the chinese can see what they are missing. Maybe if a few people see the products western societies need and use an uprising will happen and china will be free to have as many children as they want and pratice any religion they want and have some type of human rights standards.
neither one of these senarios is likely, but the second one is more likely to chip away at the communist ideas that china has. true google plays along and doesn't allow china to search for the information on tibet, the dali lahma, or teinaman square. But people may still be able to search for the haymarket riots, Lech Walesa, cesar chavez, joe mcarthy, the khmer rouge, vaclav havel, and if they get really bored and motivated the can read up on rocky and bullwinkle.
by the way what does a chinese keyboard look like?
Thursday, February 02, 2006
It is an interesting argument though I am unsure as to how I feel about it.
On the one hand I agree with your idea that Google seems to be playing the "do the best we can card" in the name of making profits :)
On the other hand, if your mission statement is providing as much information to as many people as possible, short of trying to single handedly bring down the Chinese gov't, launching google.cn censored is about the only option they have to acheive their mandate. At least for now.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
I think this is a case for thinking beyond your mission statement to what your company's values are. And if one of your values is 'Don't be evil' then Google by definition must consider the moral and ethical implications of their business practices.
Friday, February 03, 2006
No argument from me, though personally the jury is still out on whether Google's "values" include not being evil :)
Friday, February 03, 2006
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