Rather, knowing that Google has lots of smart and literate people who have thought things through more deeply than I, I wanted to offer a historical reference to an institution that rapidly gained prominence and power in its milieu, and then made some notable errors in judgment (including censorship decisions) that may well have led to its downfall.

My offering might be dead wrong: it might offer some grains of truth - censorship is a dead stupid knee-jerk and almost always leads to the downfall of the censor - but, let the PhDs at Google figure it out.

Former classmate Greg Bird offers this:

Google's Schmidt's kowtow to People's Republic of China government policy is not being true to his product. Sell Google as product, same as sold everywhere else. If it is good enough, China, too, will want it and do with it as they please without warranty, and not have the product's producer compromise on service.

Google will probably make more money offering the same product in China as elsewhere: people want the real thing, information wants to be free, and Google, if it wants to keep the mantle of world-leveler, needs, always, to be the 'real thing'. Google 'light' or Google 'censored' will be no more successful (or less a dilution of earnings) than 'New Coke' or other brand disasters. Google needs to do the right thing - both for users, and shareholders. To thine ownself, Google, be true...
Comments 10:20:12 PM    

Chris Gulker's view from Silicon Valley - in words and pictures