[myself248]

Thought experiment: If Google doesn't move in, someone else will eventually fill the vacuum. Who?

Suppose that Chinese-born-and-bred search-engine-and-advertising-company, through virtue of having access to a massive economic resource, succeeds broadly and then enters the western markets. What then?

Not trying to justify any of this, but it's worth discussing.

[int_19h]

> If Google doesn't move in, someone else will eventually fill the vacuum. Who?

Someone with less skills and expertise, who will hopefully make more mistakes implementing censorship? Or maybe someone with more skin in the game (e.g. locals) who might actually be more motivated to sabotage it?

But, conversely, Google implementing such a thing in China - and justifying it as moral there by these arguments - would also give them skills and expertise to do it US in the future, and a canned excuse as to why it's okay.

> Suppose that Chinese-born-and-bred search-engine-and-advertising-company, through virtue of having access to a massive economic resource, succeeds broadly and then enters the western markets. What then?

Then we engage in protectionism ourselves.

[titzer]

> If Google doesn't move in, someone else will eventually fill the vacuum. Who?

This is eerily reminiscent of arguments that people have used around Project Maven (cloud compute for drone footage). At this point I am starting to wonder if this style of argument has a fundamental weakness. E.g. if immoral act "X" is going to be done by someone, is it logical that the most moral actor "A" must do this? In the limit, this has the most moral actors doing the most evil. In fact, it has the most moral actors being the first to jump in to do evil, before anyone else even gets a chance to. That seems totally backwards.

[nradov]

There is no vacuum. Existing Chinese companies already provide all of the same services there that Google provides in the rest of the world. For example Baidu is the most heavily used search engine.

[EliRivers]

Is not competition considered "a good thing"?