Ikaoshi Soup

There’s been a lot in the news the past day or so about Google and the announcement of their intention to stop filtering search results in China, along with their possible intention to pull out of the country.

Now, pottering about and looking at the news coverage for this, along with the original Google blog has me slightly amazed, mainly at some people’s reactions to Google.

I can understand why they went there in the first place, even though their motto is “Don’t be evil” – China has around 350 million internet users. That’s an astounding amount of people, and thus the potential for an astounding amount of money. I don’t begrudge them that. It does, as people say, make the world go round. And I fully support and understand why, after 3/4 years, they are considering pulling out.

I know they didn’t go their for some great, humanitarian effort, and they are just a business after all, but … some people’s reactions to Google are just bizarre.

Now, their biggest rival in China, Baidu have called the move hypocritical, which I’m entirely not sure about. Then I spot somewhere on the BBC that Baidu have close links with the People’s Government. No surprise there. Then I potter about some more and come to the BBC’s Have your Say column on this, and I’m just astounded by the amount of people who are actually supporting China’s censorship of information and the internet. Apparently Google should just shut up and obey the most strange and restrictive information laws ever, or they should sod off back to America and stop wanting more of that horrible, evil money.

Now, call me crazy for this, but although I know we’re monitored in every move we make here in Britain, we still have the right to say pretty much anything (unless you’re being a complete dick). We’re allowed to mention times in the past when the government have cocked up, or debate whether what they are doing / have done is right (such as the Inquiry in to the War in Iraq), so I don’t know how anyone who is a citizen of a “western” civilisation can in any way support what the government in China does.

Oh, and another thing that irritated me – Security experts say Google cyber-attack was routine. Well it bloody well shouldn’t have been. These attacks happen frequently, targeting those who advocate human rights and freedoms in china, but nobody seems to do much or say much about them. Perhaps if every time there was a major, sustained attack on a company and they said something about it, the world would begin to get more suspicious. Because its a damn odd thing that these attacks are aimed straight at people who are distinctly not favoured by the “Peoples” Government.