Google has acceded to the despot state in provision of internet content to China, allowing the People's Republic to constrict information and limit knowledge. Enter the phrase "human rights" into the search field and, one supposes, Google returns an error page — Did you mean: hunan rice? But that is the great compromise of engagement, the United States encouraging trade and enterprise to induce liberalism. Many concessions are made from engineering to child recreation; Google transgresses the principle of an amendment in high fashion, so headlines come easy.
What Google does stateside, however, should be looked over for its scruples. And: the company might be acquiring bad posture of its associates.
Websites and file servers have become nodes in a data collective, the scientific, esoteric, eclectic and trivial made accessible, manageable, redundant and secure. For the archivist, this is fruition on the order of Gutenberg's. Google will do and has done the work to conserve libraries — New York Public, Harvard, Stanford. The cost for this is, not illogically, proprietary stewardship. Don't use Google to search? Then you can't browse the digital stacks.
Boston and the Smithsonian declined the offer loudly enough to be heard in the newsroom, and while Google's apologia is sound — nobody has a right to view commercial replicas — the inclusion of public information with corporate assets is near the point at which purists muse about a countryside patchwork of toll-obstructed, privately owned roads. As the Boston Public Library president, quoted in the New York Times said, "We understand the commercial value of what Google is doing, but we want to be able to distribute materials in a way where everyone benefits from it." Google is correct — but clumsy in its use of heft.
A week ago, the Examiner condemned Google for rejecting a quartet of advertisements parodying the left-wing mobilizer, MoveOn. An editorial accused Google of having "censored" the campaign of Senator Susan Collins. "On its face," wrote the newspaper, "a policy that allows censorship of political speech critical of the trademark holder is a violation of the First Amendment." Not at all — it is by that freedom which a company such as Google can choose who can use its services and what they can say. Google isn't a state; its policy can be applied any way it likes. But it is a business, and strictly personal favoritism is something consumers disesteem.
Correction? From the example of Boston and the Smithsonian, done in the marketplace.