Google Moves Into China

Andrew McLaughlin, senior policy counsel for Google, posts on their blog Google's offical explanation to the questions, complaints, and concerns about Google's filting of their new search service, Google.cn.

He mentions that the decision came down to between furthering "Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally useful and accessible" and providing "the greatest access to information to the greatest number of people" or filtering their search results and compromises their mission. He makes mention that:

[...]Google users in China today struggle with a service that, to be blunt, isn't very good. Google.com appears to be down around 10% of the time. Even when users can reach it, the website is slow, and sometimes produces results that when clicked on, stall out the user's browser. Our Google News service is never available; Google Images is accessible only half the time. At Google we work hard to create a great experience for our users, and the level of service we've been able to provide in China is not something we're proud of.[...]

While it sucks that Google has to limit and filter their search results to comply with the Chinese government, he also states that they already "alter results in order to comply with local laws in France, Germany and the U.S."

Oh well. Information may be free but getting it is limited.