"Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense," Brin said.The principled approach makes sense now, and it made sense back when Google chose the censorship path.
Isn't it curious that Google created the censored google.cn site in response to having 10% of searches on google.com censored. Now that Google has done the dirty work of censoring political expression on google.cn, China has blocked 100% of queries to the uncensored google.com.
Here's to hoping that Google does the right thing, and sets themselves apart from their mercenary competitors. It's the right thing for Google, and it's the right thing for Google's users.
Update 6/7/06 6:23 AM: In a forum discussion responding to Philipp's post, I said:
Google's mission puts them on a collision course with Microsoft, with the telcos, with governments, and with privacy groups. Until now, Google's most potent weapon in these conflicts was its image and the trust people place in the Google brand.
To the extent Google's image has been tarnished by the censorship hypocrisy, so has Google's ability to compete against vastly larger competitors and to have any credibility in the privacy wars.
Ending active censorship of political thought is morally right. It's an impossible contradiction to build a business based on free, unbiased information while simultaneously building the world's most efficient censorship engine.
But it's not only morally right. Publicly ending censorship would generate a tidal wave of positive press, and once again make Google known worldwide as trustworthy and unbiased. It would provide a bright distinction between Google and their less-principled competitors. And in the wars Google will fight in the next few years, they'll need every bit of trust they can muster.