Google doing 'evil' in China?

For a company with the motto "Don't Do Evil," Google's launch earlier this year of a censored search engine (Google.cn) for the Chinese market has been something of a quagmire. 

Many activists and pundits have been in a fervor over Google's move to acquiesce to the demands of the Chinese government to censor information.

Google.com has been the global and only portal for Google's search engine, but in 2002 it faced a country-wide shut-down in China.  Worldwide protest got the site re-instated but as China's influence has grown and more notably Chinese search engine Baidu's market share has grown, the censorship dance has begun again. 

In recent months both Google.com and Google.cn have been concurrently running in China. But Google.com has faced a number of outages in China and things have recently come to a head as co-founder Sergey Brin on June 6th announced that Google had compromised its principles by accommodating the Chinese government.  While lobbying on Capitol Hill, Brin stated that Google may rethink it's entrance into China.

Coincidentally or not, circa June 6 - June 8, an Internet crack-down occurred in China which left the  Google.com portal all but shut down.

So after much controversy regarding Google's entrance into the Chinese market, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has stated that Google will remain in China, as Google believes that it is in the best interest of Chinese users. If they can't have full access, then some access is better than no access, he reasons. 

Activists argue that Google should stick to its principles in dealing with China, and demand full access for Chinese users.  If the Chinese government is going to block access then it can try; it'll come down to whether Google, the idea of "Don't do Evil," and all like-minded adherents can overcome a government.  For an idealist it's a great opportunity to take a stand and put it on the line. But for a business, the possibility of being shut out of the Chinese market(s) is quite daunting.

Interestingly enough, after Brin today announced Google will remain in China, access to Google.com within China has returned to full operational status.