How would you rather see the internet – strained through a filter or mangled by a censor?
With its attempt to score an end-run round the Chinese authorities today, Google is betting on the former. But Chinese officials, who are only now waking up to Google’s middle-of-the-night gambit, don’t sound so happy about the idea.
The Google calculation is straightforward. Redirecting all the search traffic from its local Google.cn site to Hong Kong, beyond the reach of the censors, then bouncing the results back into mainland China, has two benefits.
One: It will absolve Google of the stigma of self-censorship. The keyword filters on China’s Great Firewall may well end up having much the same effect by catching results as they reenter the mainland, but at least Google is no longer a willing accomplice.
Two: It will also make the results of Chinese interference more transparent to users. Under self-censorship, Google could only alert users in general terms to the fact that some of the results to a particular query had been withheld. With filtered results served up from Hong Kong, it will be able to highlight very specifically what has been cut out.
Of course, there’s no reason why China should hand Google this easy victory.
Google.cn may be a poor second to Baidu inside China, but it still scooped up an estimated 20 per cent of the local Chinese search market in January, according to iResearch. Will Beijing simply sit back and let Google redirect this traffic from a Chinese domain off the mainland and outside the range of direct censorship?
The early response from unnamed officials so far looks like being a resounding “no”.
The arrangement breaks Google’s “written promise”, according to one official. In fact, it would seem a relatively easy step to claim that Google was in breach of its licence for operating the .cn service.
It’s now up to Beijing to decide what happens next. Given the strong rhetoric of recent days, action is likely to be swift.
Update: Sergey Brin, who happened be in the New York Times newsroom today on a pre-arranged visit, gave an intriguing hint that Beijing might not be totally opposed to the Hong Kong arrangement:
The shift of [Google's] Chinese service to Hong Kong, Mr. Brin said, was not given a clear-cut stamp of approval by Beijing. But he said there was a “back and forth” with the Chinese government on what to do. “There was a sense that Hong Kong was the right step,” Mr. Brin said.
But he added: “There’s a lot of lack of clarity.”
Wishful thinking? Perhaps. A Google spokesman insists that the company did not cut a deal with China, and Mr Brin himself concluded: “The story’s not over yet.”
