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By silicon.com, 25 January 2006 17:05

There are two ways we could look at Google's decision to censor its service for use within China, in accordance with the wishes of the country's controversial authorities.

The first is to accept this is the cost of doing business and Google as a commercial company with shareholders' best interests at heart has had to do this in order to gain access to a billion-person economy. Google has grown up a lot since its student days and big business now dictates what it does, more so than any idealistic notions of right and wrong.

The second is to suggest that because this is Google, which extols the virtues of its 'Do No Evil' motto, it has sold out entirely and abandoned not only its sense of ethics but also its business model - given that agreeing to omit searches is a counter-intuitive move for a company which prides itself on the quality of its search tools.

Of course we'd expect concessions from the likes of Microsoft, Coca-Cola or McDonald's in any attempts they make to break a potentially high revenue marketplace. But Google?

This isn't content which falls into obvious categories widely held up in any territory as offensive - such as illegal or pornographic images (which is a whole other Google controversy currently) - this is content which is being filtered for reasons dictated by the propaganda-led agenda of the Chinese government.

So, searches for 'Tiananmen Square' bring up government-approved tourist guides. Searches for information on persecuted Buddhist group Falun Gong yields no results.

To all of us, the disguising of human rights atrocities may seem unforgivable but, as the company matures, Google may argue that motto - 'Do No Evil' - is no longer synonymous with one common sense of right or wrong but instead must evolve to encompass the law of the land in all its territories, no matter how chequered its recent history.

Still, are we letting a very short-term nostalgic view of Google cloud our ideas about what it should or shouldn't be doing? After all, the company has as much right to sell out its values and morals in pursuit of the mighty dollar as the next multinational.

And it seems that's what it's done.