on the one hand you have to applaud Google for (finally) living up to their motto here, but on the other hand, would a restricted Google service in China do more good than no service at all? (the answer is of course yes, surely. massrock's opening paragraph is clearly on the money however much what you might call my liberal absolutism would like to throw mud-balls at google; context is all, natch. i'm clearly setting up this analogy expecting a free Google to be forced out of China. there's no way Beijing would allow a free search engine to operate in its territory.)
Google will presumably take something of a financial hit off this but they are obviously a very wealthy company operating in many territories so who knows if there would be job losses even? i doubt it, but that's a total guess, granted. maybe relocations, i don't know how many people based in China work for them.
i'm kind of w cobretti here, Google gets to walk away from something that was causing them image problems, presumably giving head office the odd headache etc (and they do seem quite an image conscious company), can now look good, and in actual fact it doesn't really cost them too much.
they weren't puffing their chests up and striding about w all this big, progressive noise when they first went in to China, were they? (admittedly this is a juvenile observation, as i would have to be stunningly naive to not think organisations don't seek to turn publicity to their advantage, whatever their background.)
of course, be that as it may, as i said at the top of my post, Google being available in China is better than none at all, so i should probably cut them slack. (this reminds me a bit of the Scott Trust sending journalists to Syria to work on regime newspapers: it's better to engage and try to winnow in a little more light than stand aside. a very imprecise analogy, granted, but i think you see what i'm getting at *.)
it goes without saying i hope massrock's bracketed comments come true but in the short-medium term all i can see Beijing doing is keeping these blocks up, obviously information will find a way through, but - formally at least - restrictions of the new, expanded and even more egregious type as described in the article, will remain.
as for the surrounding area, i don't think it will do much at all in terms of ripples. east and se Asia boasts a handful of the world's strictest govts to begin w, people who wouldn't necessarily need to take their cues from Beijing (though a powerful neighbour who behaves as you do is always a nice tonic). as for some other countries in the region, Thailand is an odd one, it's vacillated in recent years on information freedom.
of course all the above w the obvious caveat that Beijing is so big and ugly (the prison camp networks, the lack of due process, the crushing of communities) that some of my qualifications are arguably being too kind to them, and, perhaps Google.
wow a lot of waffle to say not much.
* though the fact that other Guardian Group employees (eg Tisdall in the main paper) have often cut too much slack to the Syrian regime sticks in the throat enormously.
