Google CEO on censoring: 'We did an evil scale' - Macworld Forums: "The problem with allowing censorship, rather than boycotting altogether is that it does tacitly condone the official version of the 'facts'. For example compare these two search results:
Google.com image search for 'Tiananmen'
Google.cn image search for 'Tiananmen'
Paints a pretty different picture, no?"
The above quote is from the comments on a macworld article about Google's censored search in China. I showed my classes these links this morning and students were immediately doing searches of their own on google.cn. Then one said, "I got pictures of tanks."
Another student hit him on the back of the head (in a friendly way) and said, "you spelled Tiananmen wrong."
I am not sure what this means but I am reminded that like life, information will find a way. This will prove to be a major problem in China some day.
Later in the day when I had freshmen instead of seniors I had to explain why tanks came up when you typed in Tiananmen. Turns out they were born after the events that made Tiananmen Square famous. I knew this, but wondered two things: how old am I? and should they know this already?
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