It became clear April 19 that Net phone provider Skype, via a partner, cooperates with Chinese officials by filtering out some words from ongoing instant message conversations.
On the same day, there was news that, for the third time, Yahoo apparently provided material to Chinese law enforcement that led to the arrest, conviction and jailing of a dissident. It’s also well known how Microsoft’s MSN search engine has coopeated with the Chinese government.
Does this absolve Google from agreeing to censor the results of its Chinese search engine at the request of the Chinese government?
So it would seem, but the question is still an open one. The confluence of these news events also suggests that the Chinese government is dictating terms to some major Internet businesses that want into its market. And so far, nobody, not even Google, which stood up to the U.S. Department of Justice, seems immune.