[fireattack]

>(2) people in China benefits from access to much better search and subsequently gets better educated over time.

This is the point I rarely heard here, or any Western communities.

As a Chinese, I was genuinely baffled when I first heard that there are people actually boycotting the re-entry of Google in China, instead of celebrating this milestone. I thought we can finally have a usable search engine.

I guess we get in the way of ideality. Oh well.

[vore]

The Chinese government is uninterested in letting Western companies compete on the same ground as Chinese companies (e.g. any company with a significant market share in China vs their foreign counterparts doing business).

Entering China at the cost of 1) having to hand over personal information wholesale to the Chinese government in compliance with "local laws" (remember not to look at Xinjiang!) and 2) being forced into a losing position against local competitors like Baidu anyway is neither ethically great nor financially prudent.

In any case, Google is acting only in the interest of profit (as a for profit company beholden to shareholders), and painting it as some kind of great privilege for China to be receiving is big-headed on Google's part and a saccharine narrative justifying a purely business decision to make more money.

[fireattack]

Agreed with you. I'm not delusional to think Google's attempt of entry is "for Chinese people", just that practically it will help. And most importantly, it won't do more harm (some other people in this thread mentioned that it may help them to "export" censorship tool to other countries, which is a valid point.)

On the other hand, I don't feel Google's departure from China in 2010 was purely based on ideals either.

[valker43]

Two ways of looking at it. Many see it as a betrayal of Google's ideals. They left in 2010 because there was a breach in gmail originating from government affiliates and consequently endangering customers. Also, it the west this was perceived as a stand against human rights issues in China. So now a reentry looks like they are backtracking from that stance.

On the other hand, as you say, a purely pragmatic view is that it wouldn't make the situation worse if they offer a censored search engine, because that's the only thing (most) Chinese users get now anyway.

[eastendguy]

You should talk to your government then. Nobody is against Google going back to China. It is about Google developing and supporting censorship (tools),