Alex Halliday

Google : Don’t Be Evil*

Unbelievably China’s ever active censorship machine has decided to block access to Google News and YouTube.com over recent information regarding reporting of the riots in Tibet. If you have ever taken candy away from a kid, you will know what happens when you take something away that people love and enjoy……it just makes the problem worse. Efforts to circumvent the censors will increase and the end result can only be negative for China in the long-run. Corporate America should do all it can to encourage freedom of speech.

When Google started filtering search results in China that was the first step in the wrong direction. The internet is designed through and through to be uncensored. To try and impose restriction on what people can and can’t see goes against the very fabric of what the internet and it’s resulting connectivity is all about.

This to me is just shocking and will nothing to win China positive press in the run-up to the Olympics. If anything it was just draw more attention to what is going on in Tibet. Actively covering things up does nothing but send a strong signal that they have something to hide.

* Unless the second largest economy in the world asks you to do so….