Google in the news - in China and in USA (#43; Topic D)

About a week ago, I read a news story about Google in China. It seems that an agency of the Chinese government, having identified a specific blogger writing in inflammatory language in contravention of stated government's policy, asked Google to deny its continual presence. Google complied, since its policy is to observe host countries' laws. The story, mundane as it is, was played up in the media, giving me the impression that this is not done in USA. How naive I was. On Thursday (1/19/06), in a story on Department of Justice's request that Google produce all pornography-containing websites to which Google has access, I read, in passing, that DOJ has made similar requests of Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and that they had complied. Such compliance apparently has no news value; it broke into print only because of the Google story -- because Google refused to comply, on the ground that the request was vague and may force Google to reveal its trade secrets (how its devices crawl in search of websites, etc). DOJ relented, and now asks for only 1 million such websites. The case is still pending, but it has caused the Google stock to tumble -- from an all-time intraday high of 475.11 (with closing at 467.11) on Tuesday, it closed at 444.91 on Wednesday, down 22.20; at 436.44 on Thursday, down 8.47; and at 399.46 yesterday, down 36.98. In today's New York Times op-ed page, a money manager says: "Google fell 8.5 percent yesterday, their biggest decline ever, after the company said it would fight federal prosecutors' demand for records on Internet users' search queries." So, one learns, though, in this instance, the tuition is rather high.
Posted at 10:18 am, Saturday, January 21, 2006