Doug Bowman at Stop Design recently notes the new Google Calendar and it’s new, unique features. While I haven’t had the glory to test it out, there’s been a good reason… since their foray into mainstream censorship in other countries I’ve felt the need to avoid Google as much as possible.
That’s a sad thing for me, I’ve grown up in this industry for a fond love of all things Linux, Unix, Apple and Google (minus all that ‘beta’ false advertising). Though we can all appreciate Yahoo’s similar stance, and Microsoft’s invasive foreign actions — Google hits harder as it specifically boasted to our community it will ‘do no evil’.
Now, I know that Google publicly mentioned they weighed the balance of no search vs contained search — and on a scale of ‘evil’ discovered that it would be ‘less evil’ to corrupt the search results vs take a stand against censorship… was that a contradiction of terms in the truest sense? Sacrificing moral face in an effort to deliver a little information, however tainted?
I forget sometimes that these are corporations — their public marketing slogans arguing they stepped into this business on the basis of doing good in the world falls flat when they BS their lack of moral fiber with spin pitch to justify a decision to contradict the foundation they’ve built. Harsh, but scrape off the icing and use your common sense here: if you censor the content you control and deliver, how are you benefiting the world? Are you not a propaganda machine, or a utility for that machine?
The counter is that suppressing ALL content is worse — you’ve now created a void of information never to be accessed or hacked. So is google making the worlds largest political game where players volley for what’s true and what’s false?
All valid questions, but I don’t need either argued: Not standing up for what you believe in publicly, Google, makes you a coward. You can argue all day that you’ve balanced the powers in this painful decision, but it comes back to the fact that in your great company, with the potential to offer such sweeping changes, you chose to buckle on something most of us have grown up, American or not, believing to be a grave justice to humanity.
Sure, they’ll say it’s easy to sit here not running a corporation and pass judgement — and I’ll agree wholeheartedly. But I’ll sleep soundly knowing that life’s too short to sacrifice your beliefs, and I choose to never do so.
In the end, I don’t use Yahoo, I ignore Microsoft, I have my own Jabber server, I have my own webmail, I keep my own calendar system and project management. I use google for search when I need, and avoid their advertising. I’ve taken long strides to agree with what I find morally improper. I welcome your thoughts on this reflection as well.