Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own.
Google is a massive enough corporation that it’s expected to operate purely on self-interest, no matter how many times it champions the principle “don’t be evil” — although it’s been retracting even this basic statement of morality from its pages.
Until recently, though, it had preserved a pretense of ethics in response to the Chinese government’s virulent internet censorship. In 2010, Google stopped censoring its search engine and moved off Chinese servers. This was a significant move, considering in 2009, about one-third of searches in China were through Google. A number of Chinese citizens commended the decision, sending bouquets to the company’s office in support.
It was an expression of values that Google maintained for years, until a memo leaked last month that the company was developing a Chinese search engine that would not only follow censorship standards, but also track user activity and location. The company’s employees have protested the lack of transparency about this project; at the same time, its human resources department has tried to delete its traces. It’s a reneging that Google hasn’t even attempted to justify.
And a couple of days ago, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicted the internet would eventually split into two tracks, one led by America and the other by China, which presented “real danger” from the differing governments and policies regarding access and censorship. There’s a full arc connecting Google’s present moves toward China and this disjointed future projection. It’s another dishonest — but no more surprising — act for Google to deny it.
A split internet could create competing spheres of influence; a Chinese internet that spreads within the region means the transfer of tools to limit people’s access to information and right to privacy. Whereas the internet was conceived as a network to connect people and broaden access to resources, this would be a minimizing and easily exploited way of pushing users towards one constructed truth or understanding of the world.
While vaunting messages about a commitment to privacy and ethics in America, Google is working to specifically undermine those principles overseas. It becomes another tool for the oppression of Chinese citizens through lack of moral direction. The Chinese government is thus given free reign to shape an internet that works for them and targets dissenters because Google offers their services without any real reservation as long as the profit is there.
In a 2009 interview, Schmidt said, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” This is supposedly one of the principles behind surveillance-heavy regimes, but the primary good of privacy is that it protects you from malicious actors. People don’t want their information going to the wrong places, and in China, the government can easily be one of the wrong places. There’s no way Google doesn’t understand this. They profit off data, and they clearly understand that the Chinese government doesn’t act in the best interest of its citizens.
By underhandedly supporting China’s oppressive government with their products, Google abandons even the pretense of caring about consumer privacy, quality of life and safety. The free exchange of information represented by the internet is thus split based on private interests, and it’s disingenuous for Google to say this division of the web is just another inevitable thing on the horizon for the digital age when that’s a future it’s actively building. By disaffiliating itself from any sort of moral core, Google is setting itself to face some monsters in the coming decades.
Sona Chaudhary, opinion editor, is a junior English and geology major. She can be reached at sonachaud@gmail.com.
