"Don't be Googlin' that, mate."

Not long ago, Australia's government decided to ask ISPs to filter out objectionable sites and content. Google, along with many other companies and experts, argued that doing so would be almost impossible. It said some offensive stuff would remain available, some harmless stuff would be blocked, and the performance of a great many sites (such as YouTube) would suffer.

Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has now responded by making some comments about Google's credibility. As reported by Asher Moses, Conroy said, "Recently the founders of Google have got themselves into a little bit of trouble because notwithstanding their alleged 'do no evil' policy, they recently created something called Buzz, and there was a reaction, and people said well look aren't you publishing private information?"

Conroy then continued, "-Google CEO Eric- Schmidt said the following: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' This is the founder of Google. He also said recently to Wall Street analysts, 'we love cash,' so when people say, shouldn't we just leave it up to the Googles of this world to determine what the filtering policy should be . . ."

Those are some pretty harsh observations. They don't amount to asking Google to leave the country, of course, but they're not the sorts of things you usually find politicians saying about companies that haven't committed any crimes.

It should be interesting to see where the discussion goes from here. Google might achieve a big PR win by establishing itself as a defender of free speech all over the world. Or, if Conroy's views prevail, the search giant could get a reputation for meddling in other countries' affairs.

Either way, this argument could have a significant impact on Google's global market share and revenue stream.


Tag: Google, Australia, Censorship

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