Google Staff Hold Protest Over Planned China Launch
Earlier this month, it was revealed that Google was in talks with the Chinese government for the launch of their search engine in the country. It is, of course, no small secret that China has some pretty stringent rules regarding what is on the internet. As such, a search engine that doesn’t follow that remit is pretty much an anathema to them.
Google does, however, seem pretty sure that it can provide enough control on the engine to allow it to be passable under their censorship regulations. This move though has caused a lot of issues and in a report via SkyNews, over 1000 Google employees have decided to officially protest the action.
Censorship Contradicts Googles Ethos
Many staff at Google disagree with China’s strict control of the internet. As such, they feel that any association with this would violate the companies own “don’t be evil” mandate. Admittedly, calling censorship of the internet ‘evil’ is a bit of a stretch. For example, if you Google certain things right now, countless thousands of pages are already blocked. Although they are generally due to their nature being illegal. Still, when you think about it? What’s the difference really? China just chooses to ban more content based on its law than we do.
Why It Will Still Go Ahead!
Despite this action by their employees, Google is still, almost certainly, still going to proceed with this. China has around 800 million active users of the internet. In terms of online business that is a massive market. It’s for that reason alone that many ‘Western’ companies have been trying (without much success) to get a foothold in the country.
While Google is a company that has a fantastic reputation for its workplace environment, I think the staff are just going to have to accept that this could represent a whole new level for the company.
What do you think? Should they withdraw the search engine or are staff just being oversensitive here? – Let us know in the comments!
