Free at last?

The Internet,as John Gilmore famously said,is built to interpret censorship as damage and route around it. And now,Google,the front door to the Internet for most people,has decided to literally find a way around Chinas great firewall. It will now redirect search to Hong Kong,while keeping its sales and engineering offices in China and sell ads for Chinese-language search. Sick of being censored and slapped down by China,and yet reluctant to give up on a gigantic and growing market nearly 390 million users,the company has now come to a compromise.

China wants the Web to bend to its will while it is content to use it for business and recreation,anything that crosses over into incendiary political/human rights territory is not tolerated. YouTube was accused of lying when it showed a crackdown on Tibetan protesters,Google,Twitter and Flickr were blocked days before the Tiananmen anniversary,and a slew of recent regulations have resulted in thousands of arrests. It is hardly an exception: Iran,Ethiopia,Burma,Pakistan,Saudi Arabia,Syria,Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates all block content. Googles Sergey Brin calls this an untenable half an Internet approach. After a series of devastating cyber-attacks,the Google-China smackdown erupted into the headlines in January,when the company decided to defy the government and refuse to participate in the surveillance and control. The move covered Google in glory,to Chinas great annoyance. Illegal flower donation was the inimitable phrase coined by Chinas propagandists to decry the wreaths and bouquets placed at Googles corporate headquarters in China. Of course,this grand rejection need not have been prompted by dont-be-evil motives; cost-benefit analysis might have led them to the same conclusion. After two months of haggling,the company has decided to ship out with the hope that this sensible solution will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China.

Of course,that remains to be seen as so far,the government has seemed capable of filtering out whatever it wants. The issue is often tactically wielded to shame China: Obama has spoken up for an unfettered Internet,and Hillary Clinton cautioned against an information curtain. But its unlikely that Googles huffy exit will change anything yet the ideas patrol remains formidable as ever.