Section 14

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, has admitted that bowing to Chinese requests to censor search results was a mistake.

Google, whose motto is famously “Don’t be evil”, colluded with the Chinese Government in their construction of “The Great Firewall of China” by filtering Google’s search results to remove references to topics such as Falun Gong and the Tianenmen Square massacre.

Brin, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, said that he regretted the decision to censor because the company’s reputation had suffered in America and Europe.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch notes,

I’m glad that these remarks were made somewhat informally and without massaging from Google PR. It is a rare glimpse into the heart of an organization struggling with coming to terms with its own power, still only a few years old. But if Google wants to stay in the good graces of the smug western crowds, they need to say they regret working with the Chinese government because that government is evil, not because it turned out to be “a net negative” business decision.

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