Google and China

[Commentary] Google's decision to stop censoring its search service in China on Monday was a principled and brave move, a belated acknowledgment that Internet companies cannot enable a government's censorship without becoming a de facto accomplice to repression. We hope that other American companies with operations in China, notably Microsoft and Yahoo, will consider emulating Google's decision.

Google's departure may have more resonance outside China than within. We don't know how many of China's many millions of Internet users will be able to read about this public indictment of China's use of censorship. But that is preferable to helping maintain the fiction that the Internet in China is the same sort of vehicle for open communication that it is most everywhere else.