Opinion: Google fights the privacy fight at home because there's no money in relenting to the feds, but buckles to censorship abroad to sell more ads."Don't be evil." Yeah, right.
Google's recent move to bend over and take it from the Chinese government so that they can have access (read: "sell ads for") to the 100 million plus Chinese Internet audience isn't just evil…it's bad business and sets yet another roadblock in the way of anyone who wants unfettered access to publish on the Internet.
From the beginning, the very infrastructure of the Internet was designed to be uncontrollable. This made a lot of sense when ARPA was designing a network that could withstand a nuclear attack and made even more sense as the network became a global conduit of free information.
With no center and no controlling authority (and the ability to reconfigure itself around blocked nodes), the Web became the place that we all know, love and make our livings from.
The open structure and global access of the Web has led to its survival and its becoming a platform for economic expansion worldwide.
Click here to read more about Google's battle with the feds over customer data.
In fact, considering its impact on business and on our lives, it's tough to imagine a world without the Web.
Today, however, we're beginning to see a trend that, if left unchecked, could mark the beginning of the end for the Web as we know it.
The power of the Web as a publishing medium has been based on the fact that anyone anywhere can publish on it so that anyone anywhere can read what's been published.
Blogs, social networking apps, news, discussion boards…all the things that we know and love are dependent on this kind of unfettered access. Commerce and information flowing in a global marketplace depends on it.
But now Google's created a new kind of walled garden where information can't flow freely. Of course, it's unfair to single them out when their biggest competitor, Yahoo, is responsible for getting a Chinese reporter thrown in jail for 10 years after the Chinese government threatened their access to the market.
There's enough evil to go around for everyone.
What's really disturbing, however, is that Google's move to censor their content is part of a growing trend that threatens to chop up the Internet into government-controlled ghettos run by interests who are desperate to control the flow of information.
The recent debacle of the "World Summit on the Information Society" run by the UN gave voice to a number of repressive regimes (China included) who want to take control of the Internet away from ICANN to allow individual countries to better censor the content that their citizens have access to. Evil, indeed.
But it's not just repressive regimes that are conspiring to rework the Web for their own interests. Groups like the RIAA and the MPAA in the United States have kept up a nonstop barrage on Internet freedom to "protect" their intellectual property.
And while many folks would probably agree that it's probably in everybody's best interest not to allow people to steal content, when the RIAA tries to extend its control to ridiculous levels (such as making it a crime to simply make files available for distribution) we all suffer.
More restrictions means more work, lower productivity, less of a global marketplace for ideas and information, more red tape, less efficiency and, in the end, less innovation. Not only is it evil, it's just darn bad for business.
Of course, there is some hope. Even as Google bends over for the Chinese, they are fighting a good fight here in the United States to resist a request to turn over search results to the federal government.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation continues to fight the good fight as do groups like Creative Commons. The open-source movement has moved software creation into the realm of the public good. Wiley hackers everywhere continue to work to circumvent DRM and privacy restrictions when they get in the way of fair use.
Google fights for your rights. Click here to read more.
Technology always seems to be able to work around censorship and the unfair restriction of information.
But is that enough? I used to think so until I had a discussion one night with Larry Lessig, who pointed out to me that many of the more devious workarounds involve a level of technological knowledge that most people just don't have.
Every restriction, even if circumvented by intelligent folks who know how to work around it, chokes off the flow of information for the majority of the world just a little bit more. And we're all poorer for it.
It's not the technology that's made the Web the driving force for economic and social good that it is today—it's the freedom. No matter how wizbang the technology gets, in the end it's the content and the access to content that keeps us coming back.
Anything that gets in the way of that is bad for business. C'mon Google—don't be evil.
