Goodbye Google Ads #
I have loved Google from the earliest beta days and am deeply grateful to Larry and Sergey for creating such an accurate search engine. However, the company has clearly lost its moral compass. Google claims "Our informal corporate motto is 'Don't be evil.'" while at the same time covering up the Tiananmen Square Massacre to please China's communist government. They would clearly have no problem hushing up the Holocaust for the Nazis, so long as it meant more market share.
So while Google ads have helped pay for maintaining TinyApps.Org, it is time to say goodbye. I strongly urge web publishers to remove Google Ads from their sites, as well. If you own Google stock, please consider selling it. Those of us who still enjoy the benefit of freedom (for the moment, anyway) have the duty to defend it.
UPDATE: There is apparently a rather large backlash against Google forming.
UPDATE 2: Lawmaker: IBM aided Holocaust, Google following same path
UPDATE 3: YES!!! Google does the right thing four years later: We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so 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, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
UPDATE 4: Apparently this was all talk, no walk: Google co-founder: Maybe we'll stay in China after all - A month after storming the moral high-ground over China's hacking activities, Sergey Brin has declared the firm is happy to get off its high horse and kick its heels in the country a little longer.
UPDATE 5: Finally some real action: So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services - Google Search, Google News, and Google Images - on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong.
/misc | Jan 28, 2006
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