January 30, 2006

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Google Goes to China

Much has been written on Google’s China policy: In exchange for permission to operate google.cn from inside the People’s Republic, they will censor some results on that site.

The WaPo’s Sebastian Mallaby has the best take on the situation so far, if you ask me. One of his key arguments:

Google has negotiated the right to disclose, at the bottom of its Chinese search results, whether information has been withheld — a disclosure that may prompt users to repeat their search using google.com instead of google.cn. Of course, the second search might be frustrated by Cisco’s routers. But disclosing censorship is half the battle. If people know they are being brainwashed, then they are not being brainwashed.