Google was once a small company with a global influence. Now, it seems to be joining the establishment in more ways than one. Cooperating with Red Chinese censors is one example; and yesterday, Blogger claimed it had a half-hour outage today at 4 p.m. PST.
   By my reckoning here in Australia, and after clearing my cache several times and accessing pages that I had never visited (trying to avoid caching at the ISP end), I now make it 6 a.m. PST the next day that Blogger has finally become accessible. Half an hour stretched to 14 hours. I didn’t expect that.
   The hypocrisy with Google is, on one hand, refusing to cooperate with the US Government when records were requested; while kowtowing to an unelected government on the other side of the Pacific Ocean with its wishes.
   Still, search engines are not perfect, not even ones run by the Politburo. Every now and then, the right pages might drift in. Let’s hope so, as it’s unlikely that Google’s decision will be rapidly undone.
   Unless, of course, Congress investigates whether Google’s action in Red China is legal—and I received news that it is doing just that. Reporters without Borders will be testifying along with some of the big US technology firms in hearings beginning February 16. Posted by Jack Yan, 15:01  permalink

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