links for 2010-02-14

Brin: I don’t actually think the question of whether this is the Chinese government is that important. ... even if there were a Chinese government agent behind it, it might represent a fragment of policy as it were. I think that there are many people there and have different views. If you look at when we entered China and did Chinese operations in 2006...things really improved in the subsequent years. I know there was a lot of controversy surrounding that...but were were actually able to censor less and less and the competitors there were also able to censor less and less. We from the outside provided notification when laws prevented us from showing information and competitors followed suit. But I feel like our entry made a big difference. But things started going downhill, especially after the Olympics. There’s been a lot more blocking going on since then. Also our other sites, YouTube and whatnot, have been blocked. So the situation really took a turn for the worse.