Whom to knuckle under to? -- Google may be the least of three evils

Lee Drutman: Whom to knuckle under to? -- Google may be the least of three evils

01:00 AM EST on Thursday, February 16, 2006

Providence Journal

BERKELEY, Calif.

Google, that wondrous little Internet start-up whose market capitalization is now roughly twice that of the entire national newspaper industry (depending on its stock price on a given day), created a bit of a stir recently by capitulating to the Chinese government's demands for censorship.

But what made the move especially striking was that Google did so just a few days after -- in an apparent act of heroic civil libertarianism -- it had stood up to the U.S. government's demand for information about all the searches conducted on Google's Web site during one week, plus a random sample of 1 million Web-page searches.

The U.S. government wants the data so that it can determine how many people searched for child pornography during that period. The government hopes that such data will help it build a case for reinstating the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which in 2002 the Supreme Court ruled to be over-broad, a violation of the First Amendment -- but also sent back to a lower court for an eventual retrial. (The legislation is actually quite restrictive, from a freedom-of-speech perspective.)

But Google is playing hardball. And good for Google. After all, this government fishing expedition for private information is getting frighteningly out of control. Somebody up there is becoming addicted to knowing too much about your private life, and it's about time someone stood up to this.

China, however, is a different story. The government there has a penchant for pretty blatant censorship; it doesn't like people knowing about things like human rights and Tibet and Falun Gong. So any company that wants to operate a search engine for the country's 100 million (and growing!) Internet users has to ensure that those users will not be able to use the World Wide Web to learn about the wonders of democracy.

Not a happy situation for a company that has as its motto "Don't Be Evil."

Predictably, Google's decision to go along with China's censorship did not sit well with folks who value things like "human rights" and "freedom of the press." Reporters Without Borders, the international organization that pushes for freedom of the press, called it "a black day for freedom of expression in China."

Even Wall Street was less than enthusiastic. A UBS analyst told clients, "We are concerned that the inevitable negative PR will damage Google's brand." Indeed, Google's stock price has plunged to around $340 from above $475 a few weeks ago.

Sure, we would expect rival Microsoft to go along with the demands of the Chinese government (as it has done), and the U.S. government (as it has done). But Google -- the company that provides its employees with heated toilet seats and brings delightful doodles to Web searches? How could Google be complicit in Chinese censorship? Could Google, too, be evil?

Okay, let's stop and think. Google is a publicly traded company, with fiduciary obligations to its shareholders (that is, it has a duty to make money). In China, it had two choices: 1) stay out of the fastest-growing economy in the world and a country with one-sixth of the world's population; or 2) give in to the Chinese government and gain access to a giant emerging market.

No matter how much Google wants to spin things, asserting that it's doing a service by providing some information -- which is better than no information -- this was still a stark choice between principles and profits. The potential profits were simply too large to maintain the principles.

In the United States, meanwhile, it is less clear how Google's tussle with the Justice Department will hurt the company's profits. According to court documents, Google argued that in releasing the information demanded by the government, it would be divulging trade secrets (never a good business plan).

Additionally, Google may be betting that a popular stand against the privacy-infringing Justice Department is good for public relations. At worst, the company would face an expensive legal battle. But the chances of Google's being barred from operating in the United States are about zero. (The last time a major American company got its charter revoked was in the mid-19th Century.)

Moreover, underlying the whole debate are three basic facts: 1) There is an awful lot of information available through the Internet; 2) search engines such as Google collect an astonishing amount of personal information on their users; and 3) control of all this information is real power. The Chinese government wants to control content; the U.S. government wants to know what you've searched for. And yet it is Google, the publicly traded gigantic company that knows exactly what you searched for, and gets to filter and rank the world's content, that we seem to trust here.

Perhaps Google really is the least of three evils. Or perhaps it has just done a better job of making us think it is.

Lee Drutman, a frequent contributor, is the co-author of The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy (Berrett-Koehler). He is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of California.

Online at: http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20060216_16goog.179e639d.html