Doing Business By Other Countries’ Rules

Phillipp Lenssen recently reviewed sites that are filtered out of Google’s German and French indexes for reasons of internal national politics. This is not news – this has been so for some time, but it’s very interesting nonetheless, and it reminds us that all search sites find themselves in these kind of dilemmas, given they are in the business of human knowledge. In France and Germany it’s mainly hate sites which are filtered, but in China, it’s certainly going to be a lot more. Currently Google does not maintain a site based inside China, though it does serve Google in Chinese from outside the mainland. That will most likely change (the market is so large, and Google is now beholden to public shareholders who want profits), and when it does, the Don’t Be Evil motto will once more hang around Google’s neck, a length of rope that Microsoft and Yahoo have managed to avoid (though they are already in China in major ways).