Google wars: Vs The Search Engine

Could Google do what activists and sundry governments have failed to do in China? The question might sound a tad bemusing. But it does seem to aver the influence access to the internet, and its denial, has in our world. They might not be allowed to march, but people do seem to mind what they are not allowed to google. The search engine, almost a way of life for most netizens, has, of course, been criticised before. From school teachers complaining about plagiarism, to journalists who have conveniently replaced the field trip with the internet field search, Google has been blamed for a dumbing down of research. Then again, it is also indubitably a vehicle for making information infinitely more accessible. Not for nothing, then, do regimes like Iran and China pay great attention to regularly filtering what appears on computer screens. Thus, the latest fracas over Google threatening to pull out of China over restrictions to what its search engine can display. Which, predictably, includes searches for Falun Gong, human rights, freechina, Tibet, communism, Tiananmen massacre, Radio Free Asia, and, well, Playboy and a common four-letter word also used as an expression of utter frustration.

Quite a few refer to the search engine in superlative terms. With a particular stand-up comedian calling it St Google. The know-all, all-but-sentient being, panacea for a thousand queries of every imaginable sort. And the company seems to suddenly be playing the role. No one quite in their right mind leaves the lucrative Chinese market. After all, business is money. But did one, for the first time, witness some sort of wilting from the normally inscrutable Chinese regime? Perhaps keen to avoid embarrassment, the communist bosses actually went to the length of explaining themselves, saying China would remain good for foreign investors, while asking them to respect local law. But could this result in a different kind of internet revolution in China? “All desktops unite, you have nothing to lose except your filters.” Perhaps...