"DON'T BE EVIL" ... unless the price is right.

I try to keep PaleoJudaica out of politics most of the time, but this really annoys me and -- especially since I and many other bloggers use Google so much -- I think it merits a mention:

Google to Censor Search Results in China
# The company agrees to omit Web content that Beijing objects to in a new version of its service for the country.

From Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country's free-speech restrictions in return for better access to the Internet's fastest-growing market.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company planned to roll out a version of its search engine bearing China's Web suffix, .cn, today. A Chinese-language version of Google's search engine has previously been available through the company's dot-com address in the United States.

[...]

To obtain the Chinese license, Google agreed to omit Web content that the country's government found objectionable.

Although China has loosened some of its controls in recent years, certain topics, such as Taiwan's independence and 1989's Tiananmen Square massacre, remain forbidden subjects.

[...]

When Google censors results in China, it intends to post notifications alerting users that some content has been removed to comply with local laws. The company provides similar alerts in Germany and France when, to comply with national laws, it censors results to remove references to Nazi paraphernalia.

That's right: Google is treating websites on the Tianamen Square massacre the same as Nazi propaganda.

I note that PaleoJudaica is already banned in China, perhaps because I poked fun at the Chinese Government for censoring Lara Croft.

I accept that Google is -- so far -- being less evil than Yahoo or Microsoft, but this still won't do. And I don't buy the arguments (noted, but not accepted here) that they may as well do it, since the Chinese Government will do it anyway, or that what Google is doing for China is morally equivalent to banning Nazi websites for Germany and France. (If I had my way, even those would not be banned unless they contained specific incitements to criminal acts -- not just criminal thoughts. But I acknowledge that Germany and France have historical considerations that lead them to take another view. In any case, this is still not comparable to censoring Tianamen Square.)

Bottom line: unless Google's policy changes, I will no longer click on any Google sponsored links or Google ads. I urge you not to either. And if you run Google ads, I encourage you to take them down.

(Via Instapundit.)