Black, white and shades of gray

Christian Century, Feb 8, 2003

BLACK, WHITE AND SHADES OF GRAY: Google is the most popular, most used search engine on the Internet: 28 million people log on each month. In addition to keeping its search engine easy to use and free of commercialization, while being famously successful at helping people find what they are looking for on the Web, the Google organization has a simple code of conduct: "Don't be evil." They've had to ask themselves some tough questions, such as: "Should Google play ball with repressive foreign governments [or] refuse to link users to `hate' sites?" And their answers have generated some negative responses.

Last spring lawyers for the Church of Scientology pressured Google to remove a site critical of Scientology. To the dismay of First Amendment stalwarts, Google gave in to the pressure: Then Google discovered that the Republic of China was denying its citizens access to the search engine. In a compromise worked out with Google, China restored limited access to it, but some subjects are still blocked for Chinese searchers (Wired, January).