New York:A leading newspaper has stated that Google’s pull-out from China is partly motivated by its co-founder Sergey Brin’s own memories of oppression in the erstwhile Soviet Union.
Google suspended its China operations from March 22 after months of tussle with the Chinese government over cyber attacks.
Brin had emigrated to the USA from the former Soviet Union at the age of six in 1979. He said that the current Chinese web censorship and suppression of dissidents had reminded him of the ‘tyranny’ of his youth.
"In some aspects of their policy, particularly with respect to censorship, with respect to surveillance of dissidents, I see the same earmarks of totalitarianism, and I find that personally quite troubling," he said.
Brin is still taking responsibility for the day-to-day running of Google along with other co-founder Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt. He said that he couldn’t do more compromises for operating in China.
China exercised its grip over Google’s activity after the Summer Olympics of 2008.
"China was ever-present," he said.
"One out of five meetings that I attended, there was some component specifically applied to China in a different way than other countries," he added.
Google has re-routed its searches to a site in Hong Kong that is not censored. But, for the past few days, users are complaining of limitations to their searches.
At the same time, Brin has also sent a signal to other countries like Australia which plans to come up with a system that would filter out information judged objectionable to children.
"One of the reasons I am glad we are making this move in China is that the China situation was really emboldening other countries to try and implement their own firewalls," he said.
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