Google China Stops Censoring… Sort of

As we previously reported, this move, though dramatic, will probably not have much of an immediate impact on Google, which only earns about 1% of its total revenue from China operations. Similarly, many Chinese will not be affected, since only about 30% of the search traffic in the country is through Google. Instead, the big impact for both may be further down the road. Many have argued that Google’s biggest opportunity for growth was in China, which currently has 400 million Internet users, and of course, Google was supposed to enrich the lives of the Chinese by giving them better access to the world’s information resources.

Ultimately, it is still confusing to decipher Google’s motives through all of this. While it’s undoubtedly a noble cause to fight censorship in China, the truth is that Google allows its search engine to be censored in other countries. For example, Google blocks access to videos in Turkey that “defame” the nation’s founder, because the government considers it illegal. They do the same in Thailand, restricting access to videos that target the ruling monarch.

So, is Google a hypocrite, or do they just need a cyber attack to occur in one of these countries in order for them to mobilize in favor of free speech?

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