As a citizen, Google user, and Google shareholder, I have a strong perspective on Google's decision to aggressively censor search results in China. As a citizen, I believe that Google is missing an opportunity to assert moral leadership that can influence closed societies much better than collaboration (or as Google calls it, "engagement"). As a Google user, I no longer trust automatically Google's results, and I no longer give Google carte blanche credibility.

And as a shareholder, I think that Google is seriously devaluing its more valuable asset -- its trust, image and brand. This will be bad for users, bad for society and bad for Google.

There are many ways to make my voice heard. And since there is similar protest talk elsewhere on the Web, I'm trying to develop a clearinghouse of protest or direct action ideas. So I've created the Protest Google site where other concerned people can comment, or join an email list to stay informed.

Google still has a window of opportunity to reverse their fateful decision to compromise their Don't Be Evil principles. If you're concerned about this, join me in making our voices heard.

Note: Since this should be an open and participative process, I've tried to use all-Google tools -- Blogger, Gmail and Groups. Should we need to conduct any actions requiring the element of surprise (all legal, of course), I will switch to non-Google communication channels.

Site: ProtestGoogle.blogspot.com
Email: Censorship.Is.Evil@gmail.com

What if every programmer, hacker, inventor, coder, etc. took on the idea of undermining the Great Firewall of China?

Find ways to deliver the news about freedom that Google censors, safely and easily past the firewall, and past Google, to the Chinese people.

Post your ideas here and elsewhere, build websites that deliver the news the Chinese need, but perhaps encrypted.

Create a Google app that lets Chinese see the real news.

Explore all possible ways around the barriers.

Create ways the Chinese can create blogs and send email safely to communicate within the country.

A massive array of proxy servers? Napster type networks? encryption? tunneling?

If you understand this sort of programming, YOU can be a freedom fighter!

Want to join the battle for freedom?

Millions of Chinese will be grateful!    

Here's an idea, maybe it's been tried, but perhaps it'll work:

Make webpages using text which is so hideously pro-Beijing that the page is guaranteed to rank high in google.cn. Make it sound like a propaganda department masterpiece.

BUT the real news is delivered in text in images. img tags and titles also praise Beijing.

Thus: html text says in Chinese: "Glorious Worker's Collective Visits Tiananmen Square to Honor Party Leaders"

Gif images carry all the text of the REAL news. News can be updated daily or as needed by creating new images.

Perhaps the easiest way to do it is to take digital photos of pro-human-rights Chinese language newspapers, or screen captures of such websites.

Searches on Google.cn for "Tiananmen" will include the site, and by chance many people will click on the link and learn the facts.

Create and host these outside of the People's Repression of China to avoid risking lives.

The key is lots and lots of people making these pages, so as fast as Google's loyal (to whom?) employees discover a page and censor it, many more appear to take their place.

Pretty soon, Chinese looking for the real news will learn how to search for these sites: enter vomitously pro-Beijing keywords, and sift through the list of genuine CCP sites for our "fakes".

Perhaps the idea will work for a few months or even a few years. Any and all efforts will be nails in the coffin of tyranny.

Perhaps the Great Firewall will have to censor all websites which praise the Communist Party (what a pity) to stop the threat!

Wanna try? Be a freedom fighter armed with truthful Gifs? Go for it!

Please forward this idea widely, especially to anyone who can write Chinese and has basic web authoring skills.    

Dear Google Research:

Thank you for wanting to "make a difference" and to "change the world". The world urgently needs more people willing to do so.

Here's how you CAN make a big difference and change the world for the better.

I was greatly disapointed to hear Google's representative state that Google has no plans at all to create a tool for the Chinese people to safely search and read the web, and to safely write blogs and email. This was at last week's Congressional hearing in internet censorship by American companies.

Hearing statements and video:
http://wwwc.house.gov/international_relations/afhear.htm

In the hearing, Congressman Chris Smith made the point that with the money Google and others are making from censoring free speech in China, the least you they could do would be to build a way to let the Chinese bypass the censorship.

There is no better way to "change the world" and "make a difference".

Inventing new toolbars, fun web toys, or methods of translating only government-approved documents won't truly change the world.

And if China's censorship is uncontested, it will spread until all dictatorships and semi-free countries are "Balkanized"--cut off from the rest of the world by American-made hardware and software.

There are a few software products out there to help the Chinese and others. Tor is one, but it is created by volunteers with limited resources, and if the Chinese censors succeed in blocking it, they may not have the resources to try again.

So how about taking on a REAL challenge? Invent a way that can't be blocked!

Help the Chinese, Iranians, Vietnamese, Saudis, and others suffering under censorship to have their human rights of free speech on the web.

Then they will be free, and YOU will have helped.

If the bean counters get nervous and say that would offend China, and they would revoke your license, then do it in secret or fund others. But please, in the name of humanity, "be different" and just do it!

Then "Do no evil" will no longer be a joke, and Google can restore it's deleted policy on not censoring.

Thank you.

http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/    

Google Research