How far is a company willing to go to do business in China? In the case of Google, it seems quite far indeed. The #1 search engine in the world has agree to censor its seach results at its Chinese Google site. It seems the Chinese govenment doesn’t like their citizen to search for stuff like freedom, or Mickey Mouse.
For example, a Google USA image search for the term “tianamen” produced these images. However, enter the same search term in Google China and you’ll get these nice vacation pictures.
This reminds me of the editorial Michael Robertson posted on The TechZone back in Sept. It the article, Michael talks about how all the major search engines doing business in China had to give in to Chinese demands to throttle liberty in exchange for access to the Chinese market. It’s definitely worth reading and may give you 2nd thoughts about Google’s “Do no evil” business philosophy. Maybe Google will change it to “Do no evil unless you have to.”
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