How Much Do THEY make?
The announcement recently that the internet search engine Google has decided to censor searches for its Chinese viewers wasn't so surprising or frightening: Despite their "Don't be evil" motto, they ARE a corporation, after all, and whatever it takes, lying, torture, mass layoffs, downsizing, profiting on their emplyees' deaths, etc, is all part of the game. When a reporter for the London Times pointed out to the head of Google's European branch that search engines like Wikipedia have refused to go into China because they refuse to kowtow to Beijing, he replied "Well, how much do THEY make?".
What is unsettling about the announcement is that they CAN do it. Google has set up their search engine not only to exclude sites the Chinese government doesn't approve of, but will instead aim the user to an official site, one that says how awful Falun Gong is, and that nothing happened at Tiananmen Square. Yahoo helped the Chinese government track down a dissident blogger, and Microsoft is making nice with the Chinese, too. . .all for profit.
So what's to stop them from doing it HERE? Yes, the New York Times sat on the NSA spying story for a year, and yes, the Cheney Administration has "bought" news stories, here and elsewhere, and yes, Fox News is the official organ of the administration (just as the Eureka Reporter will be once it has eliminated the pinko competition), but many of us had presumed the internet would be the last bastion of free speech. Think again.
My suggestion is that, when information like this leaks out, we learn who we can trust, and who we can't. Clearly the answer is for us to avoid dealing with snakes like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Sony and the like. We can also, as consumers, put pressure on folks like Coop's board of directors to rethink their flipping off the membership by continuing to sell Coke products despite the clear statement the members wanted the boycott. They, like the Pennsylvania school board that mandated "intelligent design" for the biology classoom, can and should be replaced.
If they aren't using Diebold voting machines.
Comments
I use dogpile.com since it uses all the other search engines.
As for Diebold, I'll vote on their machines when their software is open source. Until then, they can pound sand.
Posted by: Robb Willis | February 8, 2006 11:55 PM