Google in China: new media still needs the old West.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, March 10, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Defending his company's presence in China before a House committee recently, Yahoo Senior Vice President Michael Callahan articulated the ethos of the Internet on behalf of the whole wide world of Web believers--from inventor Al Gore down to the lowliest bedroom blogger and back up to Google zillionaire founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Speaketh Mr. Callahan: "We believe the Internet can positively transform lives, societies and economies. We believe the Internet is built on openness."
Who could disagree?
As it happens, the week the reps of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were being publicly shamed by the parsons of the House Committee on International Relations for kowtowing to Chinese censorship of their Internet services, a set of about 10 pretty innocuous cartoons of Muhammad, first printed in a dead-trees Danish newspaper, had been circulating on--what else?--the World Wide Web.
No doubt some Arab governments and provocateurs exploited the Danish cartoons for cynical ends. Still, without the "transformative" technology of the Internet shipping those images instantly to impressionable minds and stoking the electronic media furnace, not in a hundred years would you have seen tens of thousands of Muslims in cities around the world marching, burning down embassies, and in Nigeria murdering at least two dozen people and torching Christian churches.
Google, as it was born into the world, announced the good news that the company's creed was, "Don't be evil." From day one the whole Internet enterprise has been similarly goggle-eyed about itself. Read any of the many doctrinal statements on behalf of the Internet or attend one of its constant symposiums, such as the two U.N.-sponsored World Summits on the Information Society held since 2003 and at every turn you will find the language of "revolutionary transformation." Here's Principle No. 1 from the 2003 World Information Summit: "We, the representatives of the peoples of the world . . . declare our common desire and commitment to build a people-centered, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create," etc., etc. And stage global rampages.
What God told Adam and Eve was essentially "Don't be evil." So Google, Yahoo and the rest of the Internet community have time to discover the tough moral complexities of life outside the electronic garden. That said, there are strong reasons for supporting the Internet industry's innocents abroad. An important mutuality of interests exists between these idealists and the traditionalists they so often seek to displace.
Start with the idea of being free to express one's political views anywhere in any way, a no-brainer on Planet WebWorld. But it appears that several hundred million or so Muslim inhabitants of Planet Earth aren't fully invested yet in one of the most foundational political ideas of Western thought, dating back at least to Milton's "Areopagitica." Today government systems to filter, block or punish politics on the Internet exist not only in China but throughout the Middle East, notably in Iran, one of the heaviest Web-using nations in the world.
The age-old tendency of governments to monitor and regulate behavior, however, has never been limited to speech. In his congressional testimony, Google's Elliot Schrage raised the "matter of business." After noting that China is an "important market" and that Google's competitors are there, he said: "It would be disingenuous to say that we don't care about that because, of course, we do. We are a business with stockholders, and we want to prosper and grow in a highly competitive world. At the same time, acting ethically is a core value for our company, and an integral part of our business culture."
The principle of "acting ethically" is a primary value among people who think about making rules for the Internet, and that's fine. But they and Internet companies like Google are making what they seem to think are special claims for their moral status--as something new that "transforms" any society they touch for the better. If so, then Wal-Mart, Exxon or McDonald's, indeed the entire globalizing enterprise, are entitled to make much the same claim. Google with a market cap floating around $108 billion can't purport that it is significantly different than any of the other capitalists that were trashed by anti-globalists on the streets of Seattle and Genoa.
The Internet fraternity conveys a persona of being really nice, really smart people who want to be open and creative and . . . good. The scent of moral condescension to "old" structures hangs heavily in the air. So it's more than ironic to see executives from Google and Yahoo subjected to morally absolutist criticism from politicians and pundits over attempting to do business in the Chinese market. Google's share price is under enough critical pressure just now without thinking about grandly withdrawing from China's 111 million Internet-user market. Welcome to the Old World, where as before, one has to get out of bed every day and face another set of imperfect choices.
Despite its claims to special status as the guardian angel of unfettered expression, the Internet industry's commercial success--and indeed that of the Internet itself--depends crucially on including in its mantras a commitment to protecting the ideas of private markets and free trade, ideas equally responsible for the long-running success of the Western tradition, which gave us the Internet. It would be naive to think it is going to be possible to fence off Internet speech from attempts by governments and activists to impair markets and trade. Maybe the Google Foundation could pitch a penny or two into that fight.
The Internet in its relative infancy is like a child exercising new freedom primarily through challenges to orderly systems--old retailing models, old media, old privacy rights, old libel standards, even old notions of parental control. Some of the pushed, notably governments with statutory power, are going to push back. Part of this process of challenge and progress, then, will have to include rediscovering and redefending some very old Western ideas and values. Free speech is one, but it is not the only one.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
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