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Goodbye Google, good riddance
By Marion Masar |
00:00 UTC+8 March 25, 2010
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Print Edition
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GOOGLE'S closure of its search engine in Chinese mainland should not damage Sino-US relations as long as it remains an isolated act by a commercial company, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman said this week.
That is exactly where the problem lies ?? Google is not just a commercial company. Ever since the issue of alleged hacker attacks on Google's e-mail accounts, the company has been increasingly presenting itself with close association with the US government.
Google's position as not just another commercial company was confirmed this week when a spokesman for the US National Security Agency made a statement that the authorities there are closely watching the Google-China situation.
National Security Agency? You got to be kidding me. The kind of agency that normally deals with domestic and international terrorism and various other security issues, among others helping the US government to create social instability and unrest in order to gain economic advantages in those countries later?
Whether willingly or not, Google has become a puppet, a slave of its own government who now dictates to Google what and how to do it in order for the government to achieve its objectives in foreign policy. It is only bad for Google as it has to exit one of the fastest-growing Internet markets in the world. Yet whoever thinks that this is all about censorship and freedom of information will be disappointed.
The alleged e-mail attacks that supposedly took place several months ago were pretty unsuccessful and appalling attempts to make China look to be the bad guy in the eyes of the world audience. Not a single piece of evidence has been produced confirming the involvement of the Chinese government in such actions.
However, as intended, it provided the Americans with an excuse to trigger and begin this annoying campaign for freedom of information. And why only China? There are dozens of other countries that censor the Internet on a much bigger scale than China does.
Anyway, if someone wants to get information they can do so easily. With the current use of technology, every amateur can bypass filtering; hence, it is not the real issue that's troubling the Americans.
One has to wonder what the Americans really want. The more they shout their ideas to the world, advocating freedoms and democracy, the more they are ridiculed in the eyes of world audiences for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan where they have taken thousands of lives of innocent people in the name of democracy and freedom.
It appears that they are becoming increasingly frustrated with countries that reject the American imperialism and refuse to bow to US pressure when it comes to introducing their ideas of freedom and a free society.
The sooner Google leaves, the better for China. There is enough space for domestic companies to cater for both advertising and search engine markets and Google's technology in China was outdated anyway. Goodbye Google, and please never come back.
(The author is a European national currently living and working in London.)
That is exactly where the problem lies ?? Google is not just a commercial company. Ever since the issue of alleged hacker attacks on Google's e-mail accounts, the company has been increasingly presenting itself with close association with the US government.
Google's position as not just another commercial company was confirmed this week when a spokesman for the US National Security Agency made a statement that the authorities there are closely watching the Google-China situation.
National Security Agency? You got to be kidding me. The kind of agency that normally deals with domestic and international terrorism and various other security issues, among others helping the US government to create social instability and unrest in order to gain economic advantages in those countries later?
Whether willingly or not, Google has become a puppet, a slave of its own government who now dictates to Google what and how to do it in order for the government to achieve its objectives in foreign policy. It is only bad for Google as it has to exit one of the fastest-growing Internet markets in the world. Yet whoever thinks that this is all about censorship and freedom of information will be disappointed.
The alleged e-mail attacks that supposedly took place several months ago were pretty unsuccessful and appalling attempts to make China look to be the bad guy in the eyes of the world audience. Not a single piece of evidence has been produced confirming the involvement of the Chinese government in such actions.
However, as intended, it provided the Americans with an excuse to trigger and begin this annoying campaign for freedom of information. And why only China? There are dozens of other countries that censor the Internet on a much bigger scale than China does.
Anyway, if someone wants to get information they can do so easily. With the current use of technology, every amateur can bypass filtering; hence, it is not the real issue that's troubling the Americans.
One has to wonder what the Americans really want. The more they shout their ideas to the world, advocating freedoms and democracy, the more they are ridiculed in the eyes of world audiences for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan where they have taken thousands of lives of innocent people in the name of democracy and freedom.
It appears that they are becoming increasingly frustrated with countries that reject the American imperialism and refuse to bow to US pressure when it comes to introducing their ideas of freedom and a free society.
The sooner Google leaves, the better for China. There is enough space for domestic companies to cater for both advertising and search engine markets and Google's technology in China was outdated anyway. Goodbye Google, and please never come back.
(The author is a European national currently living and working in London.)
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