Many of us are getting a little bit tired of the ongoing debacle between search engine giant (do no evil) Google and China, and just want an end to the saga one way or the other, so what’s the latest?
Well China is now accusing Google of having “intricate ties” with the United States Government and is trying to change China by imposing Western (American) values on them.
Now correct me if I’m wrong but I think a lot of people have been trying to do that. And, aren’t the shelves of Chinese stores filled with Western CDs, Videos and everything else?
Anyway, the root of the problem is apparently China’s internet regulations which are put in place to try and preserve Chinese way of life. China is certainly not going to change their policies just because of Google.
“One company’s ambition to change China’s internet rules will only prove to be ridiculous”, Xinhua news agency said.
Of course there’s heaps of speculation about what game Google are really playing. We can’t forget that Google initially complied with Chinese censorship laws and encountered widespread criticism for doing so. Then they changed their minds.
At the beginning of this year Google said it would no longer comply with China’s Internet censorship laws and after some Google email accounts were hacked in what Google said were sophisticated cyber attacks, for which Google of course blamed China, they threatened to pull out. However, they haven’t so far.
Google of course say they are not being influenced by the US powers and that it is they who decide what they do.
“The decision to review our business in China was entirely Google’s and Google’s alone” Google spokeswoman Jessica Powell told AP news agency
At the moment Google is still trying to figure out whether they should stay in China, or cut their losses and pull out.
Google seems to think that they are big enough to threaten China and that China can’t do without them but is that true? It’s all become so clouded I don’t really know anymore.
The thing is, China is a massive country with a huge online population so it would be in Google’s interests to stay.
At the moment Google might be dominant just about everywhere else in the world but in China it is the Chinese search engine Baidu that’s most popular.
The latest “rumour” is that Google may announce their decision to leave any time now and will possibly pull out on April 10th.
The plot thickens.
