US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a major speech on Internet freedom two months ago, called on US technology firms not to support online censorship.
“I hope that refusal to support politically motivated censorship will become a trademark characteristic of American technology companies,” Clinton said. “It should be part of our national brand.”
Amid a host of trade disputes with China, however, Google’s decision last week to halt censorship there met with only a fairly muted response from the US State Department — and virtual silence from other US technology giants.
Go Daddy, the world’s largest registrar of Web domain names, said it was no longer registering names in China because of what it called “chilling” new identification requirements imposed by the Chinese authorities. Rival Network Solutions said it had also stopped.
But no other US companies indicated they were prepared to follow Google’s lead and run the risk of being shut out of the world’s largest online market.
Yahoo did not reply to a request for comment on Google’s move but chief executive Carol Bartz said last year: “It’s not our job to fix the Chinese government.
Microsoft reiterated the position it took in January.
“We appreciate that different companies may make different decisions about where and how they operate their business based on their own experiences and views,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
Republican Representative Chris Smith praised Google, but said Microsoft “needs to get with the program and join with the side of human rights rather than enabling tyranny.”
Google’s decision to stand up to the Chinese authorities also won plaudits from human rights groups but it was not universally lauded and Microsoft and Yahoo also had their defenders.
Michael Arrington, founder of US technology blog TechCrunch, condemned what he called Google’s “certain level of hypocrisy” for abandoning a search market they were “failing in” while leaving behind “assets that have more promise.”
“What I can’t sit and watch is Microsoft being raked over the coals by a government that does nothing to fight the evil that they say exists in China,” he said.
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are all founding members of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), which brings together Internet and telecom companies, human rights groups, academics and investors to protect freedom of expression and privacy.
Rebecca MacKinnon, a member of GNI’s board of directors, said Yahoo had largely disengaged from China and said Microsoft’s continued presence there is not at odds with its participation in the initiative.
“The point is to try and be practical with the idea that engagement is the ideal situation if they can figure out a way to do it responsibly,” MacKinnon said. “We try to get beyond the alternative of in or out.
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