And the horse you rode in on

I try to avoid politics, religion, and the proper way to fix risotto on this weblog because that isn’t the direction I want to take it. Those topics and others seem to attract posts long on emotion and personal attacks. But thanks to Google, I've finally found a reason to avoid using their service.

First Microsoft bows to the Chinese by providing software that censors expressions of freedom. Now Google, the company that acted like the moral arbiter in refusing to provide certain commonly used search terms to the U.S. government, “will offer a self-censored version of Google's popular search system that restricts access to thousands of terms and Web sites.”

The next time I’m near the Google campus I would love to see how many of their cars have “Free Tibet” stickers on them. The irony would seem to be completely lost on them. Thanks Google, for showing that you only demonstrate some sense of morals when money is not at stake. To quote the punchline: we’ve determined what you are, now we’re just haggling over the price.

Update: According to a Wall Street Journal article Wednesday, Google’s U.S.-based services will remain available to Chinese Internet users. There will still be sites unavailable for the user to link to, but that will be because of the Chinese government.

The more interesting part of the article is something long overdue. “Some U.S. tech companies are working behind the scenes to craft for the Internet in China an equivalent of the Sullivan Principles, guidelines formulated in the 1970s that helped mobilize U.S. corporate investment to protest South African apartheid.”