Silicon Insider: Microsoft's China Headache

June 16, 2005 -- -- There comes a moment in the history of every great company when an unanticipated event cuts through decades and millions of dollars worth of branding, corporate imaging and PR, and exposes that company's core values for what they really are.

We recently saw such an exposure at Apple Computer, when it successfully crushed some Web sites for pre-announcing company products.

Now, this week, it happened to Microsoft. And if, after all of these years, nobody is surprised that the company is willing to compromise ethical principles for profits and market share, the subsequent press coverage suggests that many people are still surprised by how low the company is willing to go.

It's one thing to use your near-monopoly in a market to play hardball with competitors, it's quite another to be a lickspittle to tyranny to enhance your bottom line.

Some background: As reported by The Associated Press, bloggers that use the MSN Spaces section of Microsoft's new Chinese Web portal and type in words like "democracy," "freedom" and "human rights" are immediately hit with a message that says:

"Prohibited language in text, please delete."

You don't know whether to laugh or cry -- at the sheer hamfistedness of the Chinese government (does anybody really believe that a country run this way can become, and remain, a dominant player in the world economy in the 21st century?) or the sheer cynicism of Microsoft for allowing this to happen.

Apparently, Bill Gates, with his laudable AIDS-in-Africa campaign, is willing to spend billions to save peoples' lives -- but won't lift a finger to liberate them.