Wednesday, February 01, 2006
a graphic example of censorship
I am outraged at google caving into Chinese censorship. We're talking at least 20 extra points of blood pressure here. I'd go into it more, but the following two urls demonstrate the problem more eloquently. (click on each)Google China http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen
Google the rest of the world: http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen
INFURIATING. I have a personal story about censorship that I'll share once I've calmed down. On the other hand, I take much joy in that wikipedia has taken on the US congress... in the name of TRUTH and seems to be winning, thus far. I'm sure a few embarrassed congressional staffers are wishing that Wikipedia would cave in, like google (and for that matter, msn) just did.
What does Wikipedia got that google doesn't? Balls. And no sissy weasel worded responsibility to the shareholders, only a responsibility to the truth. Google should remember that in part, its responsibility to its shareholders is in being a trusted source for reliable information.
By so blatantly exposing the evils of censorship, of what happens when something falls down the memory hole, perhaps google has done the world a favor. It is too soon to tell.
- "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?…The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." — 1984
UPDATE: So I took some time to calm down and try to dissect all sides of the issue.
I did catch the google spin on things, and lost my temper again.
- The rationale for launching a domestic version of Google in China – a website subject to China’s local content restrictions – is that our service in China has not been very good, due in large measure to the extensive filtering performed by Chinese Internet service providers (ISPs). Google’s users in China struggle with a service that is often unavailable, or painfully slow. According to our measurements, Google.com appears to be unavailable around 10% of the time. Even when users can reach Google.com, the website is slow, and sometimes produces results that, when clicked on, stall out the user’s browser. The Google News service is almost never available; Google Images is available only half the time.
These problems can only be solved by creating a local presence inside China. By launching Google.cn and making a major ongoing investment in people, infrastructure, and innovation within China...
The bandwidth problem is easy to solve: Upgrade China's internet connections to the rest of the world to the demands being placed on them. They could easily drag OC-48 or OC-192 fiber through Singapore and Japan, for example.
No caving into censorship required. Oh, China DOESN'T want a faster pipe to the rest of the world? They want to firewall everything? They want local control of their data? TOUGH. Why enable that? Far cheaper to upgrade their connections...
A few hundred high speed wimax routers aimed in from the borders of surrounding countries ought to solve the quality of service problem handily. ¶ 11:56 AM
