How Google mirrors China

[Commentary] The successes of Google and of China share some common attributes.

They both derive their present strength from their skill at appropriating and organizing information according to the rules that suit them. They both have compelling stories about whom their rules serve. Google says it prospers by democratizing information for its users. China says it prospers by aligning its leadership with the needs of the Chinese people to advance economically. China and Google take for their own purposes all the information in the world they can get their hands on.

Is it really surprising then that some smart Chinese people — no one has definitive proof they are affiliated with the government — have been poking around Google's service, grabbing information from human rights activists' e-mail, and perhaps stealing valuable intellectual property from the U.S. search giant and from other major corporations? Here's another question: When Google now threatens on principle to stop kowtowing to Chinese government censors, might it be that commerce, not principles, is the soul of the matter? That when Google says it means to protect its search clients and e-mail customers, that it really means to protect archaic algorithms and other secret sauces that are central to Google being Google?