the citizen-viewer

Google's corporate motto "don't be evil" has gone by the wayside, judging from its recent agreement to set up in China and block any sites that the Chinese government disapproves of from appearing in its search results. Sites having to do with democracy, human rights and other icky things.

In response, Students for a Free Tibet are asking you to break up with Google this Valentine's Day. "Have you heard about Google and the Chinese government?!" they ask. "They're SO going steady. We know it's all about the money though. Why else would Google betray us all and start spreading China's lies?"

Don't panic. They don't expect you to never use Google again. Just to boycott Google for the one day, and use one of the many other search engines they suggest -- ones that don't help dictatorships keep their subjects from finding information about their basic human rights. Cnet has an article about how it works; you can try it yourself too. Just go to www.google.cn and search for Human Rights Watch.

It was only two years ago that Google's Sergey Brin had this to say, in an interview in Playboy magazine:

PLAYBOY: Have you ever agreed to conditions set by the Chinese government?

BRIN: No, and China never demanded such things. However, other search engines have established local presences there and, as a price of doing so, offer severely restricted information. We have no sales team in China. Regardless, many Chinese Internet users rely on Google. To be fair to China, it never made any explicit demands regarding censoring material. That’s not to say I’m happy about the policies of other portals that have established a presence there.

Notice, he's only saying that he's not saying he's happy. And he's not saying he's sad, either.

PLAYBOY: What would you do if you had to choose between compromising search results and being unavailable to millions of Chinese?

BRIN: There are difficult questions, difficult challenges. Sometimes the "Don't be evil" policy leads to many discussions about what exactly is evil. One thing we know is that people can make better decisions with better information. Google is a useful tool in people's lives.

A useful tool in Hu Jintao's life, anyway.

You can sign up for the boycott here, and also send your thoughts to Google and other search engine companies that are playing footsie with Beijing. According to the organizers, Google executives have received over 40,000 protest emails and Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Cisco have received nearly 4,000."

It's not much, but it's a start.