Google, business, and morality

Professor Tom Smith reports, and regrets, that Google has caved to the "Great Firewall of China":

Google has launched a Chinese version of its search engine, but is censoring key search items which it believes will annoy the Chinese government.

The move comes after a year of deliberation and means that Google joins Microsoft and Yahoo in using servers hosted in China. This will give it a significant speed advantage over uncensored search engines.

Such external sites have to pass through the 'Great firewall of China', a network of government servers used to determine what Chinese internet users are allowed to see.

"This was a difficult decision for Google. On balance we believe that having a service with links that work and omit a fractional number is better than having a service that is not available at all," said the company on its blog.

"It was a difficult trade-off for us to make, but one that we felt ultimately serves the best interests of our users in China."

I have never understood why so many appear to believe that being willing to characterize one's decision as "difficult" should protect one from the discomfort of having others point out that the decision was a bad one.

UPDATE:  Here is an interesting contrast:

BB&T, the nation’s ninth largest financial holdings company with $109.2 billion in assets, announced today that it “will not lend to commercial developers that plan to build condominiums, shopping malls and other private projects on land taken from private citizens by government entities using eminent domain.”

In a press release issued today by the bank, BB&T Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Allison, said, “The idea that a citizen’s property can be taken by the government solely for private use is extremely misguided, in fact it’s just plain wrong. One of the most basic rights of every citizen is to keep what they own. As an institution dedicated to helping our clients achieve economic success and financial security, we won’t help any entity or company that would undermine that mission and threaten the hard-earned American dream of property ownership.”

I am not claiming, by the way, that Kelo-style eminent domain is as bad as China's statist hostility to free speech.  I am just suggesting that if BB & T can exercise moral judgment, why not Google?  (Of course, it could well be that BB & T simply knows that Americans appear to be angry about Kelo, but not so angry about China's lack of interest in free speech.)