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25 Countries Censor Google Services

By: Alexia Paxton

What could the factors be behind such web censorships?
Westernized content present in the internet usually does not abide by the traditions, sensitivities and values that are prevalent in other parts of the world. Governments of these traditional countries are of the opinion that such content could negatively influence its people and thus web censorship is the only possible prevention that can be administered to control it. Activists of freedom of speech have taken up this topic of web censorship with its respective government who assume that this action will be for the good of the public. Since the governments around the world do interfere with on land business activities in regards to local laws and ethics, thus it was evident that eventually they would censor the web too. The biggest setback is that the censorship challenges internet's characteristic feature of being an open free source of information.

How would businesses get disturbed by online censorship?
The different ways that online censorship can affect business are as follows:
Limited dealing
When censored by a country it becomes impossible to have any kind of trade in that country. China censoring Google will result in the latter losing out of money in the present as well as future scenario.
Injure to brand popularity
For online and offline business activities a company does invest millions in it. But when individual countries censor these companies their brand name is at stake which results in huge losses. Being visible virtually is important to many companies so if in case their brand name suffers then it would be only advisable to withdraw activities from that particular region.
Extra expenditure
Due to the always changing political environments, some businesses after setting up realize that the new rule of the land is not favourable for them. This undoubtedly has expense implications for those companies apprehensive when it comes to shifting costs, higher labour expenses and so on.

What would the business outlook on web censorship be?
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft shared his views regarding web censorship on the 'Good Morning America' show. He said "You've got to decide: do you want to obey the laws of the countries you're in or not? If not, you may not end up doing business there." This really is a legitimate point and for companies that have been dealing all over the world offline for lots of} years is one they've by now learned and taken in their stride as a characteristic feature of dealing with other countries.

Why is the online world so diverse?
If some of Google's services are blocked in countries where you are promoting your products, worry not there is a solution for it. When these services are already blocked, as in the example of YouTube in Turkey, the next step would be, where possible, to source alternatives.
For instance YouTube is blocked in Turkey so the subsequent step should be to find alternatives. Metacafe, Rewer and Hulu are other video hosting sites that businesses can utilize in these affected countries. Google Blogger repeatedly faces blockage in China. In this case one can go for the many paid hosting services available where they offer to change your blog IP within 30 minutes of it being blocked by the authorities.

As World Wide Web surfers at all times seem capable of finding a route through the censors' mesh, similarly companies determined to reach their audiences will be able to.

Article Source: http://www.gambling-articles.org

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