Googles Exemplary Example!

Normally I'm not a fan of the corporation. In fact as a general rule I tend to be extremely anti-corporate. It is for that reason alone that I am so fearful of the rise of China to a world power. Most people are afraid because of their large army or that major western corporations well either fall by the wayside and be replaced by their Chinese counter-parts or simply relocate, thus severely damaging our economy and our current way of life. These concerns, while valid, do not bother me in the slightest. Instead China worries me because of the comparative lack of corporate responsibility. While Western corporations can hardly be called responsible, they are at least accountable to the citizens of the country in which they do business (instead they simply export their unsavoury actions to another part of the world [ex - shell in Nigeria, Nike in Vietnam, Coca-Cola in Latin America and Walmart everywhere]) But for the most part a corporation based in Canada, the US or the EU would never think of perpetrating an offence in their host nation(s) like those committed abroad. When such an offence is committed, justice, to the extent of the law which can be used against a hazily defined entity such as a corporation, usually comes swiftly as it did for Enron.

However with China that would not be the case. China is essentially a pragmatic economic juggernaught. What that means is there primary concern is the padding of the GDP and GNP - essentially they are willing to turn a blind eye to any corporate misgivings as long as the economic success of the corporation outweighs the economic value of perpetration committed. And for the most part the world, and its subsequent governments and corporations, has chosen to ignore this.

Google has stepped forward. Standing amongst the largest and most economically significant corporations in the world has taken a remarkable stand against the Chinese government. In a blog release last week, Google reported that they had a breach of security. That the breach had originated from China and what was targeted was the source code of much of their Internet technologies and the Gmail accounts of several prominent human rights advocates who operate within China. Google was not the only major corporation involved in this attack, but over 20 other corporations were attacked as well (Including Yahoo, Microsoft, Adobe) - However what makes Google stand apart from the other corporations is their response. Every other corporation either refuses to comment on the attacks (such as Dow Chemical and Symantec [the makers of Norton Anti-Virus]), agrees with Google in spirit but won't act (such as Yahoo) or simply sees this as the cost of doing business within China (like Microsoft). Google will have none of this. In accordance with their company ethos, "Don't be evil," Google has given China an ultimatum: either remove the censorship from Google's search engine, or Google will shut down google.cn, close their offices and walk away.

Google has said enough is enough. They truly are a corporation that is taking a stand for human rights and they deserve mad props for this. Either China folds and provides its citizenry with a search engine that provides results other than the state owned Xinhua news agency's account of Tianamen Square incident or they loose 1000's of high paying educated jobs and the worlds largest Internet technologies corporation. Its a tough choice, but either way the world will be a better place and for that alone Google deserves praise.