Information is always neutral January 14, 2010
Posted by Blake Sunshine in blogging, social media.Tags: china, google, google in china, search engines, social media
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Most of you who read my blog already know that I LOVE China. I was both shocked and amazed by the things I saw and people I met when I visited last July.
Of course there were many things that I did not and still do not agree with that the Chinese Government does. I know that information in always neutral, and that it is neither inherently good nor bad. The Chinese Government certainly does not agree with that, just take a look at all of the words they have banned from search engines in China.
Borrowed from informationisbeautiful.net/
Which is why I am not surprised to hear that Google is going to stop operating a filtered search engine in China.
According to Google, “We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”
But Google is not just doing this because of their belief that information is neutral, they actually detected an attack on their infrastructure that originated from China that resulted in the theft of IP.
I understand why Google is doing what they are doing, but I feel like there has to be some way to allow the people of China to get the information they need and deserve within the confines of their government.
The Chinese people are an amazing people and they deserve access to information, and I believe their government and Google need to work together to give them this luxury.
I love China
