One of Google’s founders, Sergey Brin, admitted on Friday that the company’s decision to censor its search engine in China had been bad for business. When the company launched the Chinese version of their search engine in 2005, it was modified to exclude certain topics - such as the Tiananmen Square massacre and the Falun Gong movement.

The company has only once expressed any regret and never in as strong terms as yesterday. Mr Brin said the company had suffered because of the damage to its reputation in the US and Europe.

Last year in a speech in Washington Mr Brin admitted the company had been forced to compromise its principles to operate in China. At the time, he also hinted at a potential reversal of its stance in the country, saying “perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense”

It’s unlikely that we’ll see a policy change in the near future. Co-founder Larry Page said: “We always consider what to do. But I don’t think we as a company should be making decisions based on too much perception.” He claimed that most of the harm to the company had come from newspaper headlines, which affected the perception of people who didn’t go on to read the actual articles.

(Via The Melon Farmers)

Trackback this Post | Feed on comments to this Post