Dr. Alexander von Paleske -- Google has successfully followed the footsteps of Microsoft: To become the dominating Nr 1 in a new business - the business of Internet search engines.

Now Google is confronting the government of the Peoples Republic of China head on.

End of Google's Censorship for China - what’s behind it?
Google has announced, that they will no longer censor the contents, it's search engine finds on the internet, which they have done right from the beginning of their business in and with China in 2006. This will, beyond any doubt, mean the end for Google in China.

Has Google changed it’s mind about censorship and accepted that censorship is unacceptable, or is it just another public relations gimmick?

Let’s have a look
Helpful in this context is, how the other big Internet service providers dealt with the demands of the Chinese government for blocking certain websites.
It started with Yahoo in 1999. As a matter of “customer care”, Yahoo supplied the Chinese government with a program, that enabled censoring.

Yahoo ignored the fact, that freedom of speech and freedom of information are basic essentials for a democracy. Something that Yahoo enjoys, where it’s headquarter is based: In the US.

Censorship is clearly an enemy of democracy and goes hand in hand with dictatorship.

In Europe, censorship was associated with one man, who brought it to perfection in the first half of the 19th century: Prince Metternich, Chancellor of Austria.

However, Metternich was a monarchist of conviction
The modern Internet- Metternichs are just after the money. Pecunia non olet – money doesn’t stink.
Moreover, the organization Reporters without Borders accused Yahoo back in 2005 to have helped the Chinese Government in convicting a Chinese journalist to 10 years imprisonment by supplying sensitive material .

And – unfortunately – Microsoft’s Bill Gates is blowing into the same trumpet as Yahoo. He yesterday played down China’s censorship, and his comments were promptly played up in China.

Microsoft’s MSN started in China in 2005, promising to fulfill all Chinese requirements i.e. censorship.

Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch was not any better.He threw the highly respected BBC-International- program out of his China Star-Satellite channels on request of the Chinese government. And he started his MySpace in China as a separate entity from the worldwide MySpace in close cooperation with the Chinese authorities.

So what about Google?
Google was a relative latecomer in the Chinese market, started only in 2006, however played, like all the others, to the tune of the Chinese government. Calling it’s censorship “development aid”, a strange description indeed.

The great hopes, Google had for a quickly growing market, now estimated to be 350 million, did not come true.
Only 15.1% of all search requests land in Googles pot. Most go to the very popular local search engine Baidoo and only 1% of Googles revenue was generated in China.

On the other hand, the damage in reputation by doing reckless censorship for the Chinese government could in the longer run by far outweigh the small benefits in revenue generated in China. That is the real logic behind Google’s decision.

Only China?
However, the question remains, is Google’s censorship limited to China?
Our own experience puts this into question.

Our website Nachrichten Heute with a large amount of investigative journalism was listed on Google News in Germany for more than three years.
After we uncovered, that behind the hijacking of the Ship Arctic Sea in July last year were not pirates, but the Israeli secret service Mossad, our website disappeared form Google News.
A Fax, sent to Google-Germany on 1st October 2009, requesting an explanation, was never answered, up to today.