The sham that is Google’s stance with China.

Should we go or should we stay?

That more than anything is probably the current motto that Google is using as it plays corporate games using the US Congress to try and inflict damage of any kind against its competitors but primarily Microsoft. Of course the current PR is going strongly in Google’s direction as they are hitting all the politically correct buzzwords and keywords with the digerati set but really let’s get some truth out in the open here.

Google is running up the anti-censorship flag to the rousing cheers of the liberal demographic – and scoring great points doing so – but is it really leaving China as it is trying to convince the world of?

Well .. yes … and no.

As Ian Betteridge pointed out today in a post

There’s only one problem with Jeff’s perspective: Google isn’t ceasing to do business in China. From a report in the very same newspaper:

“The company [Google] now believes it has found a legal way out, and said it intended to maintain its research, development and advertising sales business in China…”

So Google, to use Jeff’s phrase, is continuing “to overlook the regime’s tyranny to do business there”. Jeff makes the analogy with the Apartheid era in South Africa, and to stretch that analogy at little what Google is doing is like refusing to buy South African diamonds while continuing to buy South African fruit: it’s a boycott, but it’s only a boycott when it suits the company.

So which is it Google?

Staying?

Going?

Or are you in fact moving your search business to make it look good, get some great press, and at the same time give Microsoft and the other tech companies a great big pain in their asses?

If so at least man up and admit it instead of keeping this sham up.