Well, this is an interesting turn of events. We have major informational search sites closed down for the day. Try doing a search on Wikipedia today, for example, and you'll find it shut down. Others have followed suit. Google, although still operating, has put up a funereal black tape over its brand name on the site today, all in sympathy with the efforts to influence Congress regarding proposed legislation aimed at beefing up our country's anti-privacy laws but--and here's the rub--in the process, creating major issues regarding censorship of free speech in the process.
I'm facilitating an Inner Circle in Hong Kong on February 2 and can't wait to hear what people have to say about what is happening there. You may recall that no too long ago, Google pretty much abandoned its operations in China. Not the tech groups and engineers who remain on the Mainland, but the search engine itself. No more. They have now set up the search site so that people in Mainland China who want to search for information on, say Tiananmen, or Falun Gong, or the Dalai Lama will now be directed to a Hong Kong address where they can search away to their heart's content.
The China call Google's action "wrong." Certainly it flies in the face of China's ability to determine just what its citizens can read, search for on the internet, even converse about online. In one of my pre-calls with an executive in Hong Kong --in readiness for our Inner Circle--I was surprised when the executive said that Google is wrong in its defiance of China and its strict censorship. "If you want to do business in China, you have to follow the rules, he said." That's not how Google sees it.
In interesting ways, these two issues--Congressional efforts to beef up our anti-privacy laws but at the same time curtailing freedom of speech (in the views of Wikipedia and others) and the efforts of Google to circumvent China's censorship.
These are basic free speech issues, one of the most important underlying concepts of our U.S. Constitution. Should make for interesting conversation, don't you think?
Author of I is for Intercourse: The ABC's of Conversation, Susan Bird is the visionary behind Wf360, and a sought-after speaker around the world for her views on leadership, the strategic importance of conversation, entrepreneurship, and the role of women business leaders.
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