Admitting the Obvious

Google's founders now admit that its deal with the devil in China was bad for Google's image.

Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr Brin admitted yesterday: "On a business level, that decision to censor... was a net negative."

The company has only once expressed any regret and never in as strong terms as yesterday. Mr Brin said the company had suffered because of the damage to its reputation in the US and Europe.

Last year in a speech in Washington Mr Brin admitted the company had been forced to compromise its principles to operate in China. At the time, he also hinted at a potential reversal of its stance in the country, saying "perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense".

From what was said yesterday a policy change seemed unlikely in the near future. Co-founder Larry Page said: "We always consider what to do. But I don't think we as a company should be making decisions based on too much perception."

Much of the harm had come from newspaper headlines, he said, which affected perception for most people, who then did not read the actual articles.

The problem is that Google's deal was also bad for the people of China and those who rely on Google for services ranging from blogger (now owned by Google), the search services, to all the related companies. China benefited because they were able to control information at one of its switchboards - one of the largest search engines. It was able to limit what results could be produced on terms deemed sensitive to the Chinese government. Tiennemen Square amd Falun Gong come to mind.

It remains to be seen what Google will do going forward.