So, Google is censoring search results on their Chinese site, presumably because the Chinese government asked them to do so. Lots of people (mostly Americans) seem to be very upset about this.

Putting on my devils advocate hat for a moment…

Just because Americans happen to equate censorship and ‘evil’ doesn’t mean everyone does. From the Chinese government’s perspective, ‘evil’ could very well be defined as assisting Chinese citizens in accessing material the government considers inappropriate. That, in fact, would be why they have made doing so illegal.

As an international company Google is going to be faced with many situations where what happens to be considered evil is going to vary from society to society. How they try to resolve this with their ‘do no evil’ policy will be interesting to watch.

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