The only thing that was surprising about Google's decision to self-censor its China-based service was that people were surprised by it. In the general media coverage, there were many gleeful references to the company's motto - boasted of in the preface to its IPO prospectus - of 'Don't Be Evil' (a phrase which, at the time, caused Wall Street investment bankers to lie down in darkened rooms). How could people who wore those admirable values on their sleeves kowtow to a corrupt, authoritarian regime which tortures dissenters and denies elementary human rights to its unfortunate subjects?
Simple: the motto was conceived when Google was a private venture dominated by its two idealistic founders. But it is now a hugely valuable public company owned by men in suits. And although its two-tier shareholding structure enables its founders to retain effective control, the imperatives of shareholder capitalism still apply. China is a massive consumer market in which Google was lagging behind competitors such as Yahoo and Microsoft (not to mention homegrown competition like Baidu). The Chinese arms of Yahoo and Microsoft had already bent the knee to the local political overlords - Yahoo by handing over personal details of a user to the security authorities, Microsoft by suppressing the blog of a dissenting intellectual. They had their server farms located inside the Great Firewall developed by the Chinese authorities to keep their citizens isolated from dangerous ideas, and as a result were able to provide faster service to Chinese users than poor ol' Google, marooned offshore. And if there is one thing a public company cannot stand, it is the prospect of losing market share. QED.
The results of this outbreak of commercial realism were evident within minutes of the launch of the new '.cn' site. AP's man in China reported that searches for the banned Falun Gong movement showed scores of sites omitted and users directed to articles condemning the group posted on government websites. Searches for other 'sensitive' subjects (the Dalai Lama, Taiwan independence) and terms such as 'democracy' and 'human rights' yielded similar results.
It was difficult to decide which was more nauseating - the decision itself or the attempts by the Googlefolk to rationalise it. The argument essayed by co-founder Sergey Brin - essentially that some information is better than none - is simply pathetic. The truth is that when faced with the first really hard moral choice of their young lives, the Google boys copped out. And what makes their failure dismaying is that for a few halcyon years after the foundation of their company in 1999, there was a feeling abroad that maybe this really would be a different kind of venture - one more in tune with the original libertarian ethos of the net. Now it looks as though the cynics were right all along: in the end, money talks, and it says that principles are expensive.
Google's capitulation to the Chinese regime prompts some sobering thoughts. One is that while one may occasionally be justified in trusting an individual, one can never, ever place the same kind of trust in a company. That's why all the current concern about 'corporate social responsibility' is ultimately just eyewash. In the end, if there is a conflict between doing what is ethically right and what is commercially important, shareholder-driven enterprises will always choose the latter. They may do so gleefully (Microsoft, Halliburton), or in a mournful this-hurts-us-as-much-as-it-offends-you spirit (Google), but they will do it.
In the longer term, though, the commercial logic that led Google to capitulate may turn out to be counterproductive. The reason is that - in contrast to companies like, say, Halliburton - Google's ultimate fate depends on trust. Its corporate mission - to 'organise the world's information' - means that it aspires to become the custodian of immense quantities of private data. Already, it holds the email archives of millions of subscribers to Google Mail, plus records of every web search they ever made. And although it is resisting the attempt of the US government to mount a fishing expedition through those data, nobody doubts that, in the end, Google will comply with the law.
But that's different from making a strategic decision to compete in a space dominated by an evil political regime. Google could, after all, have said that if the Chinese authorities demanded self-censorship then it would not play. One only has to put it like that to imagine the incredulity of mainstream media reaction to such a proposition. Imagine standing up at a CBI conference and declaring that one is not going to do business in China until it makes serious moves towards becoming an open society! By joining the Gadarene rush into the Chinese market, Google may have gained short-term advantage. But it has also forfeited its right to our trust.
