In 1996, when Stanford computer science graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin toyed with a search engine that would one day revolutionize the internet world with its powerful search and retrieval capabilities, they might have dreamed that Google would one day become a household name. To Google an obscure geographical location, a homework assignment, or even a potential mate is hardly an unfamiliar concept in today’s world, where the name of the search engine has become synonymous with the very concept of internet searches. But it is doubtful that the founders of Google ever envisioned that one day they would be the center of a free-speech controversy of grand proportions.

The censorship inherent in Google China is proving to be a hot topic of debate. While Google serviced its Chinese audience with a Chinese language version of the search engine until the recent launch of Google China. Yet the earlier web site was often unreliable, due to heavy external censorship.

“Many queries, especially politically sensitive queries, were not making it through to Google’s servers,” said Elliot Schrage, Google’s Vice President of Global Communications and Public Affairs, in a testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations. “And access became often slow and unreliable, meaning that our service in China was not something we felt proud of. Even though we weren’t doing any self-censorship, our results were being filtered anyway, and our service was being actively degraded on top of that.”

When Google sought to roll out a service physically based in China, a booming market with more than 105 million Internet users, the Chinese government conditioned this on Google’s compliance with content restrictions. These restrictions, generally defined in national laws and regulation, justify censorship in the name of unity and security. Broad guidelines for censorship range from materials “harming the honor or the interests of the nation” to “disrupting national policies on religion, propagating evil cults and feudal superstitions” to “spreading rumors, disturbing social order, or disrupting social stability.”

Under this agreement, all searches conducted through Google China would be filtered for content that violated content restrictions; netizens searching for images of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, for example, would find that their search results did not include pictures of the famous ‘Tiananmen Tank Man,’ a lone protester who faced off a row of oncoming tanks after the massacre. Tests conducted by CNETNews.com found that the censors also blocked sites promoting political dissent, homosexuality, alcohol, and other “subversive” practices.

“We are concerned about the apparent contributions U.S. technology companies are making to China’s capability to control and repress information, and to identify and penalize those who express views contrary to the government’s,” Carolyn Bartholemew, acting chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said, in testimony before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. “Google’s current cooperation with the Chinese government on this matter also has prevented the Chinese government from having to respond to complaints from Chinese Internet users that they are being denied access to information they wish to obtain.”

While other search engines operating in China are held to the same standards of censorship, Google’s voluntary censorship has caused public uproar largely because of its image as a savvy, young and anti-establishment institution. Operating under the unofficial motto of “Don’t Be Evil,” Google has built its reputation on a minimalist, no-frills search interface and a quirky, creative work environment considered the embodiment of the dot-com ideal. In an action that broke ranks with competitors like Yahoo! and Microsoft, Google also refused to comply with a subpoena from the U. S. Department of Justice that was aimed at enforcing anti-pornography laws. Citing privacy concerns, Google defied the order to turn over “a multi-stage random sample of one million URLs,” and a computer file with “the text of each search string entered onto Google’s search engine over a one-week period.”

It is not unusual, then, that Google’s stance on censorship in China is earning criticism from supporters and skeptics alike. Google China is seen as both a betrayal of dearly held ideals and an example of corporate selfishness.

“Google’s willingness to be long on democratic pronouncements but short on meaningful actions — or, at the very least, words — that encourage change in the world’s largest non-democratic nation smacks of corporate doublespeak,” blasted Michael Boyer of the Weekly Standard. “If popular demand for Google in China is so massive, why sit idly by as the Chinese obstruct access to information?”

Google’s response is that internet access, even in a limited form, radically improves the political climate.

“The backdrop to Google’s decision to launch Google.cn is the explosive growth of the Internet in China,” Schrage said. “To put it simply, the Internet is transforming China for the better. And the weight of the evidence suggests that the Internet is accelerating and deepening these positive trends, even in an imperfect environment.”

He also noted that access to the Chinese language version of Google.com remains intact.

“Our new Google.cn Web site is an additional service, not a replacement for Google.com in China. The Chinese-language Google.com will remain open, unfiltered and available to all Internet users worldwide.”

This incident has incited vigorous discourse about the role of technology companies and government in international censorship. On one hand, companies argue that it is logical for multinational corporations to abide by restrictions imposed by the countries in which they operate. But risks are uniquely high in China because of the combination of a large market and authoritarian government.

“Companies don’t like to argue with the Chinese government because that’s the largest consumer market in the world,” Rohit Deshpande, professor of global marketing at Harvard Business School, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “If this was Lithuania, this would be a different issue. China, India, those are countries where you walk on egg shells.”

Critics, however, cite a broader responsibility to freedom that both the government and members of the private sector hold.

“The U.S. government is supposed to be at the cutting-edge of the fight for online freedom, especially since passage of the Global Internet Freedom Act,” the Reporters Without Borders press freedom group said in recent letters to government officials. “Yet it places no restrictions on private-sector activity even when firms work with some of the world’s most repressive regimes. We condemn this hypocrisy.”

Google agreed with this perspective, but cautiously deferred to the federal government the responsibility of reforming Chinese censorship through diplomatic action.

“The U.S. government should seek to bolster the global reach and impact of our Internet information industry by placing obstacles to its growth at the top of our trade agenda.” Schrage explained. “At the risk of oversimplification, the United States should treat censorship as a barrier to trade, and raise that issue in appropriate fora.”