Goliath vs. an even bigger Goliath

I think we all remember the biblical story of Goliath and Goliath. Where two massive entities come to work together in order to increase their quarterly earnings reports and stranglehold on the information its subjects can view? I think Jesus was in it and there was something about a scorpion riding on the back of a frog in a river or something.

Anyway, such was the pairing of China and Google. But now that partnership is cracking under the weight of obvious conclusions that should have been eminently foreseeable for all. I don't want to alarm any of you, but it seems that China is an intensely oppressive communist regime that likes to control every shred of news or information its citizens try to access. I know that's shocking to you, but it seems that Google didn't know this information either. That's why it was shocked, shocked, to see that China was using all of the information controls and censoring blocks that Google put into its Google China search engine were used to spy on dissidents and businesses. That seems so unlike China. So Google offered an ultimatum: stop censoring information or we'll shut down Google China. Yeah, China's cool with that.

China made clear today that it will ignore an ultimatum from Google to relax internet censorship and reminded all companies that they must abide by state controls of the country’s cyberspace.

The authorities published a half-page statement in the People’s Daily, official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, signalling that Beijing has already decided that its 360 million internet users will have to manage without the world’s most popular search engine.
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Google plans to stand by its pledge to close its Chinese Google.cn service if the censorship is not lifted.

Who could have foreseen? How was Google supposed to know that all the information it was censoring, websites it was blocking, and monitoring and tracking information it was providing to China was going to be used for nefarious purposes? Censoring the internet for money usually carries with it such humanitarian goals. Who knew that China would try to overstep its already ridiculous internet censorship into trying to find out who was trying to access contraband information and suing that to persecute them? How could the brilliant plan of joint corporate and government censorship all have gone wrong?

C'est la vie. It looks like Chinese citizens won't have a nice user interface to go along with their government approved searches. Plus Google is really going to get some good PR. Because what's better than pulling out of China for ethical and free speech reasons? Not thinking about the ethical and free speech reasons Google went into China and set up a high tech censorship network for, that's what. It's a shame, I had high hopes for a Google China Nexus One phone that not only had a lot of cool apps, but also recorded all your phone calls. Oh well.