On Good Morning Silicon Valley, John Murrell writes:
Apparently you can scratch "censorship in pursuit of profit" off your list of Things That Are Evil. On Wednesday, Google plans to roll out google.cn, a version of its search service custom tailored to the specs of the Chinese government and designed to reach China's 100 million Web surfers without returning counterrevolutionary results for searches on, say, Taiwan or Tiananmen. Google's China campaign won't include its blogging or mail services, because those can't be controlled as easily and, the company says, could put it in the awkward position of dealing with government demands for personal info.
The decision was reached after what was described as an excruciating internal debate, but the company finally decided, in the words of Andrew McLaughlin, senior policy counsel, "We firmly believe, with our culture of innovation, Google can make meaningful and positive contributions to the already impressive pace of development in China."
Reader comment: Shannon Larratt, publisher of BMEzine, says,
They've been doing this for some time in Germany as you recall; they continue to remove BMEzine.com from the search results: Link.
