China and Google

Source: NYT (8/23/18)
Google Tried to Change China. China May End Up Changing Google/谷歌曾试图改变中国，却可能最终被中国改变
By FARHAD MANJOO

Ever since its founding 20 years ago in a Silicon Valley garage, Google has proudly and often ostentatiously held itself up as the architect of a new model for corporate virtue.
自20年前在硅谷的一个车库里创立以来，谷歌(Google)一直自豪地——并且往往是高调地——标榜自己是一种新型企业美德的构建者。

“Google is not a conventional company,” the search engine’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, told investors as part of the initial public offering in 2004. Google, they said, would always put long-term values over short-term financial gain. “Making the world a better place” would be a primary business goal, and Google’s ethical compass could be summed up in a simple and celebrated motto: “Don’t be evil.”
“谷歌不是一家传统公司，”这个搜索引擎的创始人拉里·佩奇(Larry Page)和谢尔盖·布林(Sergey Brin)在2004年首次公开募股时告诉投资者。他们表示，谷歌总是把长期价值置于短期财务收益之上。“让世界变得更美好”将是其首要的商业目标，而且谷歌的道德准则可以用一个简洁的名言来概括，就是“不作恶”。

In the years since, Google’s once-revolutionary sensibility has been adopted and watered down by much of the rest of the tech industry, becoming the stuff of parody and skepticism. Google itself has played down its former zealousness; Alphabet, its parent company, recently dropped some references to “don’t be evil” from its code of conduct.
在那之后的几年里，谷歌曾经具有革命性的情怀已经被科技行业的相当一部分人利用和稀释，并成为戏仿和质疑的对象。谷歌自己也降低了昔日的热情；最近，其母公司“字母表”(Alphabet)从行为准则中删除了“不作恶”的提法。

Still, if you work at Google or have bought into its missionary brand, you can point to moments when its ethos did rise to something more than marketing puffery. The most obvious example: In 2010, after four years of attempting to operate a censored search engine in China under a regime there that was becoming increasingly hostile to online freedoms, Google did something that a more conventional company would not have done. It said that it had had enough, and pulled its search engine out of the massive market.
尽管如此，如果你在谷歌工作，或者相信这个充满使命感的品牌，你可以指出，在某些时刻，它的文化气质的确不只是市场营销噱头。最明显的例子是：2010年，在中国运营受到审查的搜索引擎四年后，面对一个对网络自由越来越充满敌意的政权，谷歌做了一件更为传统的企业不会去做的事情。它表示受够了，然后把它的搜索引擎从这个巨大的市场撤出。

Now, Google appears to be changing its mind. Under a plan called Dragonfly, the company has been testing a censored version of its search engine for the Chinese market. In a meeting with employees last week, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said that “we are not close to launching” a search engine in China, but he defended the company’s exploration of the market.
现在，谷歌似乎在改变主意。公司通过一个名为蜻蜓(Dragonfly)的计划，一直在为中国市场测试一款经过审查的搜索引擎。上周的员工会议上，公司的首席执行官桑达尔·皮查伊(Sundar Pichai)表示，在那里“我们并不会马上推出”搜索引擎，但他为公司开拓中国市场的努力进行了辩护。

The defenses are not unsound. Under any rational business sense, it would be insane to expect one of the world’s largest internet companies to stay out of the world’s largest internet market, especially when many of Google’s American rivals happily operate under that government’s intrusive rules. China is Apple’s third-largest market, and Microsoft and Amazon both offer a host of services there.
这种辩护并不是没有道理的。在任何理性的商业意识下，指望世界上最大的互联网公司之一远离这个世界最大的互联网市场，简直是疯狂，尤其是谷歌的许多竞争对手在中国政府的侵扰规则之下，正快活地做着生意。中国是苹果的第三大市场，微软和亚马逊都在那里有大量业务。

But wasn’t standing apart supposed to be the hallmark of Google’s Googliness? Leaving China was the kind of unorthodox decision the search company once reveled in — a move that sacrificed financial prosperity for the moral high ground, that showed employees and customers that Google, with its planet-swallowing mission to organize all of life’s information, was motivated by something deeper than financial ambition.
但是，拒绝同流合污不应该是谷歌之所以为谷歌的标志吗？这家搜索引擎曾经醉心于离开中国这样离经叛道的决定——为了道德制高点而牺牲财务成功的举动向员工和客户表明，肩负将所有生命信息组织起来这一宏大使命的谷歌，有比财务野心更重要的动机。

Activists for online freedoms worry that Google’s return would have dangerous real-world consequences, perhaps accelerating a great new wave of online restrictions in China and elsewhere. But the most lasting impact might be in how we would have to reimagine what kind of company Google was and what it stood for.
网络自由的倡导人士担心，谷歌的回归会给现实世界带来危险的后果，这或许会加速中国和其他地方新一波的网络限制。但最持久的影响可能是，我们不得不重新设想谷歌究竟是什么样的企业，以及它的立场是什么。

It is hard not to see how going back to China would be anything other than a terrific comedown — the most telling act of a company that, day by day, has come to resemble the utterly conventional corporation it once vowed never to become.
很难不把回归中国看作是一次可怕的堕落——这是最能说明问题的举动，表明一个公司渐渐变成了它曾发誓永远不会成为的那种循规蹈矩的公司。

“If Google wants to be judged like any other global company, that’s fine,” said Ben Wizner, director of the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “They should just say so — that their principal obligation is to their shareholders and their bottom line. But that has not been the rhetoric coming out of Google, and I think it’s fair to judge them by the standards they have set for themselves.”
“如果谷歌想像任何其他全球公司一样受到评判，那也没问题。”美国公民自由联盟(American Civil Liberties Union)的言论、隐私和科技项目主任本·威兹纳(Ben Wizner)说：“他们应该直接说出来——他们主要是要对股东和他们的盈亏负责。但这并不是谷歌所用的措辞，我认为根据他们为自己所制定的标准去评判他们，这是公平的。”

In a statement, a Google spokesman said that “we don’t comment on speculation about future plans.” But the company’s leaders have disputed the idea that returning to China would be a moral reversal. At last week’s staff meeting, Mr. Pichai suggested that returning to China would be in accord with the vision the company had in 2006, when it first agreed to censor results to accommodate Beijing.
谷歌发言人在一份声明中表示，“我们不会评论对未来计划的猜测。”但该公司的领导层一直在讨论，回归中国是否会是一种道德上的反转。在上周的员工会议上，皮查伊表示，回到中国符合公司在2006年做出的构想，当时他们首次同意对其搜索结果进行审查以迁就北京。

At the time, the company said in a blog post that “filtering our search results clearly compromises our mission” but added, “Failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world’s population, however, does so far more severely.”
公司在一篇博文中表示，“过滤我们的搜索结果显然会影响我们的使命，”但文章还说，“不能向世界五分之一的人群提供谷歌搜索，影响将更为严重。”

Mr. Pichai underlined this argument — that providing some access to the outside world is better than none — by citing his experience growing up in India.
皮查伊强调了这个论点，他引用自己在印度长大的经历，表明提供一些接触外部世界的机会总比没有好。

“My dad worked for a U.K. company, and they went through whether they should be in India or should they pull out,” he told Google’s staff, according to a transcript obtained by The New York Times. “And they stayed, and that made a difference for my dad. And in all likelihood, I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for that.”
“我父亲曾在一家英国公司工作，他们讨论公司是应该留在印度还是退出，”根据《纽约时报》获得的一份讲稿，他这样告诉谷歌的工作人员，“他们留了下来，这对我爸爸来说很有意义。而且如果不是这样，我今天很可能就不会在这里。”

There are other factors behind Google’s potential reversal. The internet has changed a great deal since 2010, and the company’s executives have increasingly come to see their decision to leave China as rash, naïve and ultimately counterproductive.
谷歌的潜在转变背后还有其他因素。互联网自2010年以来发生了很大变化，该公司的高管越来越认为他们当初离开中国的决定过于轻率、天真，最终适得其反。

Google’s decision was set in motion by a Chinese hack into its servicesthat was meant to uncover dissidents and spies. The attack shocked and angered Google’s founders. In interviews, Mr. Brin, who was born in the Soviet Union, compared the Chinese government to the “totalitarian forces” that had shaped his youth. He and other executives suggested that taking a stand in China might set a kind of red line for repressive regimes elsewhere.
谷歌当初的决定是由于中国黑客入侵其服务器，意图发现持不同政见者和间谍。那次攻击震惊并激怒了谷歌的创始人。在采访中，出生在苏联的布林将中国政府与影响他年轻时代的“极权势力”相提并论。他和其他高管表示，在中国采取一个坚定立场，可能会为其他地方的专制政权设置某种红线。

“I think that in the long term, they are going to have to open,” Mr. Brin told The Times.
“我认为从长远来看，他们将不得不开放，”布林对《纽约时报》说。

Since then, China’s rules have only hardened, while a host of other governments have stepped up efforts to police speech online.当时，中国的规则才刚刚开始变得强硬，而其他一些政府也加大了在线言论监管的力度。

Now even many democratic governments are adopting stringent curbs on online speech. For instance, in Europe, a “right to be forgotten” rule has forced Google and other search engines to remove results that are judged to invade people’s privacy, and more rulesgoverning hate speech and propaganda are in the works. Meanwhile, Edward Snowden’s leaks showed that the American and British governments have also hacked large internet companies, including Google.
现在，甚至许多民主政府也严格限制在线言论。例如，在欧洲，“遗忘权”规则迫使谷歌和其他搜索引擎删除被认为侵犯他人隐私的结果，并制定更多管理仇恨言论和宣传的规则。与此同时，爱德华·斯诺登(Edward Snowden)的泄露事件表明，美国和英国政府也对包括谷歌在内的大型互联网公司进行了黑客攻击。

“This argument makes me very sad: The world is becoming more like China, so therefore we might as well be in China,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, an internet freedom advocate at New America, a think tank.
“这场争论让我非常难过：世界变得越来越像中国，所以我们可能也像是在中国一样，”智库新美国(New America)的互联网自由倡导者丽贝卡·麦金农(Rebecca MacKinnon)说。

She said that advocates of free speech and human rights had long found Google to be an ally in their efforts, and that a reversal in China would be regarded as a major defeat.
她说，言论自由和人权的倡导者长期以来一直认为谷歌是他们的盟友，而在中国问题上的反转将被视为重大挫折。

“I wrote a book where I warned that China is Exhibit A for how authoritarian governments adapt to the internet and then begin to change the internet,” Ms. MacKinnon said. “And if companies like Google are now throwing in the towel and saying, ‘Well, that’s where the internet is going’ and ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ — well, that’s deeply troubling.”
“我写了一本书警告说，专制政府如何适应互联网然后开始改变互联网，中国就是证据，”麦金农说。“如果像谷歌这样的公司现在放弃，并且说，‘好吧，这就是互联网的发展方向’，以及‘不能打败他们，就加入他们’——那是非常令人不安的。”

If Google does go back to China, it will likely have to agree to an even more restrictive censorship regime than what it tolerated previously. Mr. Pichai has vowed to be transparent about how such a plan might roll out. But advocates said transparency alone would not mitigate their worries about Google’s shift.
如果谷歌确实回到中国，它可能不得不同意新的审查制度，这比它以前曾经容忍的审查制度更为严格。皮查伊誓言，这个计划的推出会是透明的。但支持者表示，透明度并不会减轻他们对谷歌转变的担忧。

“If Google is trying to promote openness and free societies, then transparency is going to be an insufficient way to make this better,” said Mr. Wizner of the A.C.L.U. “The transparency would be aimed at the rest of the world. Google wouldn’t be telling Chinese people, ‘Here’s what you can’t see.’”
“如果谷歌试图促进社会的开放和自由，透明度也不足以使其得到改善，”美国公民自由联盟的威兹纳说。“透明度是针对世界其他地区的。谷歌不会告诉中国人，‘这是你看不到的东西。’”

Sure, it’s early, and Google’s plans are not clear. There remains the possibility that Google will think of some completely nontraditional way to satisfy China’s censors without losing its soul.
当然，现在为时尚早，谷歌的计划尚不清楚。它仍有可能想到一些完全非传统的方式来满足中国的审查，而不会失去灵魂。

But that seems unlikely. The more plausible conclusion is the more obvious one: Google took on China, and Google lost.
但这似乎不太可能。更合理的结论也是更明显的结论：谷歌挑战中国，谷歌输了。

“Make no mistake,” said Michael Posner, a professor of ethics and finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “This will be a huge victory for the Chinese government and anyone else who wants to severely restrict the internet.”