Michael's Blog

Archive for the ‘Life stuff’ Category

News (i.e. Twitter) this evening is buzzing with news of the potential withdrawal of Google from China.
Matt Drummond, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, posted A new approach to China on the Google blog, declaring that Google will take a stand against censorship.  “We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn”, he writes and then “We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China”.

This is a monumental and courageous move. Every other western corporation in China is trying to build relationships and capture the world’s biggest and fastest growing market – Google sticks to its principles and says: not with us, or our collaboration. Everybody else may play along as the government pursues dissidents, imprisons them and disregards values we regard as fundamental like freedom of speech. Or is it about business rather than morals? Figures from the Chinese market indicate, that with 15% gain of market share (to 43%) in the last five months alone, Google was very successful and rapidly gaining ground against competitor Baidu.

Another opinion by Susie Wee, her “main point is that any government has good points and bad points, so we must take a balanced view”.

Paul Carr questions Google’s moral motivation in Soul Searching: Google’s position on China might be many things, but moral it is not, if Google had morals, they would have made this call much earlier, not after four years of censorship. MG Siegler defends Google and states that “it’s never too late to do the right thing”.

So is it more important to be right, or to be effective? Is this a loss cutting exercise, disguised as a moral act? Whether a move like this is effective or not will only show in time, during which the goal of this effectiveness may be re-defined several times. Trying to be right or “to do the right thing”, is a values question, and often a very immediate decision to be made. For Google the point for this decision came after repeated intrusions, they made it and nobody knows, what the implications will be in the long run and how much it will hurt their business. What they do know, is that they stood up and did not tolerate an environment that compromised their practices and values.

The reaction in the traditional News, in blogs and on Twitter: See translated tweets at the China Digital Times.

I spent most of Monday in a Sydney local court, waiting to act as a witness in a negligent driving case. The defendant had no legal representation and was not sure whether to plead guilty, so while he sought advice, the witnesses had to wait.
I was watching the constant coming and going in the court room. Open door, bow to judge, find a seat. Get up, go to door, bow to judge, leave. A number of cases were adjourned, the ones that the judge deals with are mostly first offences and range from traffic offenses to assault.

9 out of 10 offenses were alcohol related.

There is the pub owner, who met some mates on the way home, had a few beers and got caught DUI. He cannot afford to loose his license and has installed a breathaliser in his car that won’t let him drive after drinks. He gets six months without license and 18 months with the breathaliser, it’s not his first offence.

There’s the guy who assaults his girl friend after coming home drunk, telling her in no uncertain terms what he expects of a good girl friend. They are both here together today, she loves him, he gets off on probation and will have to join a course on anger management.

There’s the guy that threw a bottle out of a car at another driver and lucky for both did not cause any damage, there’s the guy who attacked a bouncer who didn’t want to let him into the club and there is the jealous boyfriend who bashed the guy who talked to his girlfriend.

It’s all alcohol. The judge starts another sermon. She mentions the maximum penalty everytime. She stresses the seriousness. She lets most of them off on probation and fills the anger management courses. Chance that they won’t do it again are below 40%, however, they most likely will not get caught.

A very sobering experience, should be compulsory life education.