Google and Privatized Authoritarianism: New at Reason

Tech giants get a lot of well-deserved flack for playing at partisan politics, picking sides in policy disputes, and suppressing speech and ideas that don’t fit well with their dominant political ideology. But for a glimpse of real danger, writes J.D. Tuccille, consider what happens when Google, the dominant search-engine company, teams up with a regime like China and lends its considerable clout to reinforcing authoritarian rulers’ control over their suffering subjects.

Google left China in 2010 after realizing that there was no end to the demands and intrusions the government would make, no matter how the tech firm tried to comply. But now the company appears willing to do almost anything asked to win access to the vast market. And what’s being asked of the company is that it help the government control its people.

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