I have worried on and off on this blog about the growing reach of Google.  But yesterday I was thrilled to see Google take a determined stance on the issue of censorship and – by implication human rights – in China.  I very much hope that the team there has the fortitude to stick to its plan, even if that means a rough road ahead for one of the world’s largest markets.  Now lets see if any other Internet and IT companies will follow suit.  Many of them have lower margins and more competition in their core markets, so this will be harder for them to do, but it would be terrific. 

In the meantime, this goes quite a way towards making me think that “don’t be evil” might be more than a cute slogan.  Which in turn makes me wish we would do more to fix our credibility problems as a country when it comes to human rights and the environment.  I wish we had the courage to go ahead with a shutdown of Guantanamo, even if that results in releasing people who will want to attack us.  And I wish we would aggressively cut our consumption of oil and our emission of green house gases, even if others might try to get a temporary competitive advantage from that.

I have worried on and off on this blog about the growing reach of Google.  But yesterday I was thrilled to see Google take a determined stance on the issue of censorship and – by implication human rights – in China.  I very much hope that the team there has the fortitude to stick to its plan, even if that means a rough road ahead for one of the world’s largest markets.  Now lets see if any other Internet and IT companies will follow suit.  Many of them have lower margins and more competition in their core markets, so this will be harder for them to do, but it would be terrific. 

In the meantime, this goes quite a way towards making me think that “don’t be evil” might be more than a cute slogan.  Which in turn makes me wish we would do more to fix our credibility problems as a country when it comes to human rights and the environment.  I wish we had the courage to go ahead with a shutdown of Guantanamo, even if that results in releasing people who will want to attack us.  And I wish we would aggressively cut our consumption of oil and our emission of green house gases, even if others might try to get a temporary competitive advantage from that.