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As to satellite internet, I think your other readers have done an excellent job of explaining why, exactly, that is not the end-all-be-all freedom-media of the new era. The only addition I would make would be to remind you of Rupert Murdoch and his attempt to become the satellite media provider for the Chinese market in the late 90s, early 00s. The result? After losing hundreds of millions due to Beijing’s interference, he left the market, and it is now dominated by home-grown providers, who they control, that stole his tech with government backing. Why is it so hard to understand that the one and only reason for the CCP’s existence is to retain power, whether it be over information, public policy, or anything else, and that they will not allow any organization which they do not control to share that power? They charge reporters who report on broken roads with felonies, for pete’s sake; you think they’re going to let any foreign, independent company have a dominant market share in any field?

I have to disagree. I think there are several angles to this move:

1. The Chinese government was (allegedly) hacking into dissidents’ gmail accounts. While this itself has little to do with google.cn per se (I don’t think google offered gmail from the mainland servers), if true, it demonstrates the extremes that Dà Gēgē is willing to go to in order clamp down on freedom. The announcement from GoDaddy about the PRC’s invasive demands around domain registration would seem to confirm this.

2. I imagine many google employees, you know the cream of the crop eggheads with lots of letters after their name, were not particularly happy to be working for a company whose prime directive is to not be evil and whose prime business is to provide access to a global web of information, to be engaging in political censorship on behalf of an authoritarian regime. I bet they weren’t happy with it when Google announced it, and the signs that Google’s presence in the market there weren’t improving the situation just made the cyber attacks the last straw.

3. An unintentional(?) benefit to their actions now may be that one day, perhaps in the distant future, when Chinese citizens actually get to enjoy their freedom along with their Gucci and Prada, they will remember which company took a principled stand. In the meantime, we here lucky enough to already be in the Free World can remember it for them.

I don’t know what’s going on over in China, but the cyber-attack allegations, along with the leaked instructions to their news outlets about the whole issue, indicate that whatever it is, it’s not creeping freedom. We’ve been told that integration China into the world economy will help spread freedom more than isolating them, and that’s probably true. But that doesn’t mean we have to actively collaborate with them on technological means of oppression.

It’s about time a major company put principles before profits. Shame on all the other tech companies who happily offer their products in direct service to oppression.

I expect if google leaves that some very similar stuff will start popping up in china

In past years the best of Bob’s columns has been where he goes over all of the predictions for the previous year, and scores himself. How did he do?

Have you written one of those yet if so, which one is it?