Google’s About Turn in China

My latest BBC column looks at what Google is up to in China – read it on the BBC News website as usual.

Google has responded to what it terms “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure” aimed at getting access to the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists by announcing its desire to stop censoring search results on its Google.cn website.

Writing on the official Google blog the company’s chief legal officer David Drummon says that “over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law”.

But there is clearly little expectation that this will be possible and Google has apparently decided that it will, if necessary, stop operating in China.

Read the whole thing.

However the story has moved fast – I said ‘

Here in the UK, Peter Barron, former editor of BBC Newsnight and now Google UK’s head of communications, has been all over the media giving their side of the story.

I haven’t seen any response from Chinese government spokespeople, and doubt one will be forthcoming.

Google may be big news in the west, but the decision of one search engine provider to renege on its agreement to follow local laws and ask for an exemption is unlikely to merit a formal response.

But I reckoned without the intervention of the US Administration in the row, which is turning it into a diplomatic incident. Perhaps there was more behind the decision than first seemed to be the case… this one might have legs.

Who is responsible in our cloudy world?

[As ever, this is also on the BBC News website]

In the next few days [in fact it is now published] a number of large technology companies, including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!, are going to announce that they have signed up to a voluntary code of conduct on how they do business in countries that curtail freedom of expression like China and Singapore.

The code has been drawn up by the Washington-based digital rights group The Center for Democracy & Technology and a non-profit in San Francisco, Business for Social Responsibility, and it is believed to address the terms of business companies should adhere too and also to call on them to try to ensure that suppliers and business partners also sign up. Continue reading “Who is responsible in our cloudy world?”

I saw this…

Here’s what I’ve tagged on del.icio.us:

My del.icio.us bookmarks for July 23rd through July 30th

Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between July 23rd and July 30th:

Watching the Olympics

[As ever you can read this on the BBC News website – and it seems the story is already moving on, with reports that press access to the net will be filtered by the Chinese]

I won’t be going to Beijing for the Olympic Games next month, and in fact I probably won’t even be going to London in 2012 when it’s our turn to host the festivities.

I don’t watch athletics or any of the other events that will be taking place. I don’t support a football team either, or have much interest in cricket despite being an English male. Sport just doesn’t excite me at all.

But even though I don’t care which country wins most gold medals or whether world records are broken for running, jumping or throwing odd-shaped objects, I’ll be watching what goes on around the Olympic Games with keen interest, because this world-wide sporting event offers a fascinating perspective on the state of the internet today.

Continue reading “Watching the Olympics”