Google Screwed Up China Standoff

Google’s decision to lock horns with China over censorship “may go down as one of the worst in the company’s history,” writes Henry Blodget of Business Insider. Google made a media spectacle out of the whole thing, giving China no way to compromise without losing face. Had the company just stopped censoring quietly, and responded sluggishly to the government’s demands when it noticed, the Chinese people would be better off.

But thanks to its public standoff, Google’s removed its search engine entirely from Google.cn. Sure, there’s a link to the uncensored Google.hk, and for now, China isn’t blocking it. Google argues that means it won, that it didn’t “cave,” and that it’s not censoring anything. “We disagree,” writes Blodget. “ We feel the company's China search engine has gone from censoring a handful of sites to censoring the entire Internet.” (More Google China attack stories.)