Battleangel

They are walking a very fine line here … and not just Google but the spirit of the net …

One can’t help but to suspect that censorship is afoot elsewhere too. The issue with China’s centralized firewall is so well known that it is difficult for Google to keep us in the dark about this. It’s no matter to me obviously, especially since it ended up in the headlines (and the cover was blown), but it doesn’t feel like the right thing to do somehow.

What else is being kept from us? I’m sure we’d all like to think that the internet is uncensored by definition. Folly. News like this raises the issue about indexing of controversial content, and not just by Google but by search engines in general. I have this nagging feeling that freedom is being stolen from us. Bit by bit and day by day. It’s something that can make me wake up in cold sweat in the middle of the night.

One could also assume that one little policy infringement will lead to another. I bet there are lots of people reading this, a fair portion of those perhaps in Washington (and as such in direct authority over the internet backbone), thinking that this is great news and should be taken advantage of.

Freedom of speech, use it or lose it.

Source: Google Conforms to Chinese Censorship