Google Founder Admits Mistakes in China

From China Herald (weblog):
By Fons Tuinstra

"In a kind of surprise statement Google-founder Sergey Brin admitted yesterday the company had compromised its corporate principles by giving in to the Chinese censorship. Google started last year its news search service in Chinese by only allowing government-approved sources on the service. It then launched another censored search engine www.google.cn although its general search engine www.google.com was mostly available to the Chinese users. According to AP Brin said Google would try to improve its censored version, but might also reverse its course by withdrawing the service. Most customers preferred the non-censored service anyway. Well, that is not really a surprise, is it?"


From AP Associated Press:

"Brin said Google is trying to improve its censored search service, Google.cn, before deciding whether to reverse course. He said virtually all the company's customers in China use the non-censored service.

"It's perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say, 'Look, we're going to stand by the principle against censorship and we won't actually operate there.' That's an alternate path. It's not where we chose to go right now, but I can sort of see how people came to different conclusions about doing the right thing." "