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NEWS > TECHNOLOGY > GOOGLE TO SHUT DOWN CHINA
GOOGLE TO SHUT DOWN CHINA
March 21 2010
Mountain View, CA – In Greek mythology, the Titanomachy, the War of the Titans, was a battle between two generations of Gods. The groundwork for that battle began with the usurpation of Uranus by his son Cronus. Taking the throne and ruling with
an iron fist, Cronus sought to prevent any similar treachery from his own children and swallowed all of them upon birth, save one, a child his wife Rhea managed to secret away, Zeus. Coming of age, Zeus retrieved his siblings from their father’s stomach and led a rebellion, throwing the Titans to antiquity and ruling the world from Mount Olympus.
Similar stories persist throughout cultures all across the world. Indeed, the notion of the young and trodden upon taking vengeance and their rightful place at the throne of their elders is embedded in our species. We are after all replacements for our parents. Such stories also continue to have relevance in today’s world with young companies and nations taking the mantle from older and more established entities. There is no place where that battle between the ages is more apparent than in a current conflict between search giant Google and the People’s Republic of China. With debates over censorship, state security, and best business practices all falling into the debate, one side has finally made a decision. That decision? Google has decided to shut down the nation of China.
“They've been very cagey about what they've been doing since that initial statement, so everybody's been guessing. I don't think they will be able to persuade the Chinese government to let them run an uncensored search engine -- it's just not going to happen,” said Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei.org to CNN. “This is many ways a battle between the new world, the new frontier of information, and the old world of ideologues and totalitarianism. The spread of information in the modern age threatens to undo fragile governments like the one China employs, but being the old dog in the game with a very large audience, China has a few tricks up its sleeve.”
Authoritarian control of the state over its people has been a founding edict of all countries, though nations such as China have much more explicit controls in place which can be threatened by things like Wikipedia vandalism.
“Obviously there are a lot of things that the Chinese government simply does not want their people to know. In a totalitarian state the less information accessed by the people the better, and the internet is the greatest reservoir of information that has ever been created. It is not an existential threat to the state, it is a real fundamental source of peril,” said Scrape TV Government Oppression analyst Gene Wilkers. “China is of course not like dictatorships of the past, or at the extreme end like say North Korea, but it still relies on total control of its people in order to exist. This is true of any nation, in the west control is brought about via consumer goods and debt, but in a nation like China hands on control is far more fundamental to their very existence.”
Outside the flow of information, China has routinely blocked adult sites, something Google has been hesitant to censor.
“For China blocking pornography is actually a state security issue. Birth rates continue to be a major burden to the country and pornography is only going to exacerbate the problem. Population control is something very few people see as an issue when it comes to running a nation, but unrestrained growth causes scores of problems and they need to put a curb on that growth,” continued Wilkers. “This action by Google is something unique however and if they go through with it, it will truly be a fundamental shift in the way countries conduct business. If China falls off the internet, at least Google’s form of the internet, they will ostensibly cease to exist. Never before has a corporation simply with flip of the switch pushed a country out of existence, but this is a new age so anything is possible.”
Attempting to find Chinese cities on Google maps returned errors through Saturday morning though the issue is apparently unrelated.
Martin Philton, Technology Correspondent
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