Google in China--it will be difficult to “do no evil” whatever it decides to do.

For years Google’s been in a jam over China—the problem just got more complex.

A few days ago, Google got hacked into by what IT authorities in the U.S. believe were sophisticated, government-sponsored trouble-makers.  The attack was called “Operation Aurora” by security experts at McAfee and was considered far too sophisticated and too targeted to be anyone but agents of the Chinese government.  The Washington Post reported that other firms were affected as well, including Yahoo, Northrup Grumman, Symantec, and Dow Chemical; however, none of these have publicly discussed the matter or what they plan to do to deal with a repressive government. 

A more successful attack could have placed Google’s entire operation at risk—so Google’s ready to hurt China were it hurts China the most—stop cooperating with the repressive government to retard human rights information from being disseminated! But the problem is not that easy--as the following interview leads one to understand.  

[By way of background, the New York Times in a 2006 article, Google’s China problem (and China’s Google problem), sets the scene that Google now threatens to reverse:  "In January [2005], a few months after [Kai-Fu] Lee opened the Beijing office, the company announced it would be introducing a new version of its search engine for the Chinese market. To obey China's censorship laws, Google's representatives explained, the company had agreed to purge its search results of any Web sites disapproved of by the Chinese government, including Web sites promoting Falun Gong, a government-banned spiritual movement; sites promoting free speech in China; or any mention of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. If you search for "Tibet" or "Falun Gong" most anywhere in the world on google.com, you'll find thousands of blog entries, news items and chat rooms on Chinese repression. Do the same search inside China on google.cn, and most, if not all, of these links will be gone. Google will have erased them completely."] 

To “uncensor” Google.cn now is tantamount to having it decommissioned by those operating from behind the Great Firewall—yet this would be retaliation for being hacked…not a principled stand by Google--some argue--against China for repression of human rights!

Here's the dilemma for Google and that of all thoughtful by-standers.

So the question is this: should Google abandon its complicity with the repressive Chinese government, namely to get back at the Chinese for threatening Google--but risk losing it’s positive influence in a place where fair and responsible representations of the western world are few and far between?  Even if Google now were to apparently act altruistically—and let’s face it that would not be hard to do for a company that has ample opportunity make a considerable sum of money in China, with search, music deals, etc.—it stands to leave behind many customers in China who have grown to depend on it instead of the state-run search engine Baidu--where human rights and other information about a wide world that might potentially offend a repressive government are never any threats.  

"Do no evil" will be difficult to live up to by Google now, no matter what it does.

And in the balance of that decision--a complicit Google still serving a buttoned-down China...or an indignant Google escapes being under a hostile Chinese government's thumb--stand good individuals, i. e., Chinese consumers of web information services, who have grown to depend on the fresh-perspective of Google.cn—despite its compromises and flaws—that’s troubling to consider. It seems that even with a flawed, don't-rock-the-boat approach, Google’s had a very positive impact in China—if not perfectly so.  Without even a compromised Google, China and many on the leading edge of that culture will be set-back in what ways critics of a compromised Google may not have anticipated. 

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