Grownup talk re: Google/China

Grownup talk re: Google/China

Google’s been taking an undeserved pounding from the press and bloggers since announcing its decision to provide search services in China that abide by that country’s censorship rules.

Since ignoring the Chinese market isn’t a viable option for a multibillion-dollar public company, Google honestly had no choice in the matter, all talk of internal agonizing aside.

What’s been sorely missing from the ensuing noise has been much serious discussion of what Google and other Internet companies might do to balance their need to do business in China with their desire to be responsible corporate citizens. And, no, the two are not mutually exclusive.

“It’s easy to condemn Internet censorship in China,” writes Mike Langberg of the San Jose Mercury News in his column today. “Yet it’s hard to come up with an appropriate response.”

Langberg speaks to some experts who have started to move the discussion forward.

“There’s only one way out of this moral quicksand: A clear and consistent set of principles for what U.S. tech companies can and can’t do in China,” Langberg writes. “Perhaps something like the Sullivan Principles from 30 years ago, which set guidelines for how multinational corporations should do business in what was then the apartheid state of South Africa.”

Easier said than done — maybe even impossible — but trying is a far sight better than all the gum flapping about Google being evil.