For those that are angered/outraged by Google’s policy in China, here’s your opportunity to express these feelings and pledge to boycott on V-day:
http://www.noluv4google.com/
“Break up with Google this Valentine’s Day – Have you heard about Google and the Chinese government?! They’re SO going steady. We know it’s all about the money though. Why else would Google betray us all and start spreading China’s lies?
PLEDGE NOW>> to boycott Google on Valentine’s Day!”
I’m not convinced Google is evil, and I think there are much better targets for a boycott.
Google are definitely doing evil, but also being hypocritical in claiming not to do evil. Boycotting Google for a day won’t make a difference, and all the other big search engine providers also caved into their greed and do similar activities in China.
Blocking Googles advertisement on the other hand might have more impact, since it hits their bottom line directly, and generally benefits the end user.
If they were merely selling computers to the Chinese government that would be one thing, but to actively undertake to self censor your core business is quite another.
This balkanisation of the Internet is also a bad thing, those who remember networks before the Internet will know what it is like when every network has different protocols, and you can’t find something out because it is on another network, or some link is down. It is getting that way on the Internet, what with China, and Iran, and BT leanfeed.
I think the closest analogy (at the risk of breaking Godwins law) would be to opening a newpaper in pre-war Germany, and immediately suppressing any anti-Nazi sentiment or stories, purely to avoid losing the german circulation your newspaper had before the rise of the Nazis. No one with principals would do it, but modern businesses are only interested in the shareholder return. It is purely corporate greed.
Go reread 1984.