On March 24, the overseas edition of the People's Daily published a commentary entitled "Google is not God", accusing Google of helping the US intelligence and emphasizing China should promote hometown technology. Here is the abstract of that article:
Technically, Google is not retreating from China. First, Google just redirected its domain to Hong Kong, which is a special administrative region of China. Second, Google may try to keep part of its business on the Chinese mainland. Open Google's search website and you will see "Welcome to Google's New Home in China", so "retreat from China" is not the right parlance.
The US media made an issue of Google's departure. Washington Post declared, "If Google is blocked, we will see nothing but darkness". It seems that Google is the spiritual God of the Chinese people.
In fact, according to a survey conducted by huangqiu.com, 84% of Chinese people think Google's retreat doesn't matter and many people are averse to Google's threat. The Indian Zee news said, for Chinese people, Google is "just a search engine".
For Chinese people, Google is not god, and even if it puts on a full-on show about politics and values, it is still not god.
Actually, Google is not a virgin when it comes to values. Its cooperation and collusion with the US intelligence and security agencies is well-known, which aroused spats with Europe. If some information is "unfavorable", Google must delete it under the order of relevant US agencies. The data of its search results is also "stored for inspection".
After Google launched an attack on China's censoring, American officials and media responded vigorously. Is it still a corporate incident or commercial action? All this makes one wonder. Thinking about the US' big efforts in recent years to engage in Internet war, perhaps this could be an exploratory pre-dawn battle.
In the US, top executives of Google got involved in American politics rather deeply, and someone may be thinking about starting his political career. Google completely misjudged the situation, and did not grasp that Chinese people are extremely averse to external threats and pressure. Google's sudden politicizing is not a responsible action, which brings great confusion and loss to its Chinese workers and partners. We couldn't stop Google's departure, but it must cope with the aftermath.
Google's retreat also brings us to further consideration. We must be wary of some corporations' desire for monopoly as we should be wary of some countries' desire for hegemony. They are the same in essence. During globalization, we should learn from the outside, but we cannot stop developing our own innovations. China should set up and follow its own technological development route. This is an issue that needs our immediate attention.
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