Google Regrets Being Evil in China

By Al Brown | January 27, 2007 - 13:51 ET

But Google's founders don't regret being evil because of moral principles. It's about the bottom line [emphasis added]:

Google's decision to censor its search engine in China was bad for the company, its founders admitted yesterday. Google, launched in 1998 by two Stanford University dropouts, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was accused of selling out and reneging on its "Don't be evil" motto when it launched in China in 2005. The company modified the version of its search engine in China to exclude controversial topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Falun Gong movement, provoking a backlash in its core western markets.

Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr Brin admitted yesterday: "On a business level, that decision to censor... was a net negative."

So, they don't regret being evil because they've helped a communist regime oppress their people, they regret being evil because it affected their profit margins.

No word yet on whether Google regrets being evil by supporting jihadi propaganda and suppressing American counter-propaganda on their popular YouTube subsidiary. Maybe they'll decide after YouTube's next profit and loss statement.

Topics:

Comments Policy

All comments are owned by whoever posted them and are subject to our terms of use. They should not be assumed to represent the views of NewsBusters.

Viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Hey, market forces can be the

January 27, 2007 - 14:35 ET by aero

Hey, market forces can be the best teacher of all. Good old capitalism has a way of fixing most things in the end. Even if Brin doesn't believe in being anti-communist, he does apparently believe in being pro-capitalist (at least as far as his own profits are concerned). It's a start. ;-)

<Posting from China where

January 27, 2007 - 16:05 ET by DarkCurrent

<Posting from China where Newsbusters is not censored>

It's fairly easy to get to uncensored Google or anything else here... you just need to know how to configure your browser to use a proxy, then you can go to the Google of your choice. That's not to say Google doesn't suck...

From my experiments it appears censorship is only IP addr deep.

But will this post make it out??? ...what's that sound outside? ... thuowmp thuowmp...

Google's shameful duplicity.

January 27, 2007 - 16:39 ET by Dave R

Al,

I caught that line too when I saw the story on Drudge. It is clear that those two STILL don't get it. Perhaps Larry and Sergey should invest some of their millions in a return to Stanford to complete their respective educations.

Perhaps they should load up on history courses, particularly those that deal with past brutality of Marxist/Leninist tyranny in this world, not to mention the places where it is still going on.  Assuming that Stanford actually still teaches history.

Perhaps they would then understand why there is such derision towards what they have done in aiding a communist government in depriving dissidents of their rights and freedoms, if not there very lives.

It would give them something to think about the next time they are boring holes through the upper atmosphere and partying down in one of their flying party machines.

I wonder... do they regret be

January 28, 2007 - 00:00 ET by Nazareth

I wonder... do they regret being evil towards Israel and encouraging more anti-Semitism by mislabling Israeli land as Palestinian and embedding links on their maps to anti-Semite websites?

http://sacredscoop.com