internet - Google denies deals with censor

Google has never negotiated with China on filtering the internet - unlike other portals, says Sergey Brin, one of the founders of search engine Google in last Friday's interview with Playboy, reprinted in their IPO-prospectus.
In the fall of 2002 the Google search engine was no longer accessible and for some time visitors were redicted to other websites, including Chinese search engine Baidu.com. A resumption of the service led to widespread speculation on whether Google had brokered a deal with the Chinese censor. Google, other search engines and IT companies are regularly accused of assisting China in filtering the content of the internet.
Google is one of the first to answer concrete questions on the issue and denies it has ever negotiated. "There was enough popular demand in China for our services—information, commerce and so forth—that the government re-enabled us," says Brin in Playboy. " He says Google never agreed to any conditions set by China. Brin: "And China never demanded such things. However, other search engines have established local presences there and, as a price of doing so, offer severely restricted information. We have no sales team in China. Regardless, many Chinese Internet users rely on Google. To be fair to China, it never made any explicit demands regarding censoring material. That’s not to say I’m happy about the policies of other portals that have established a presence there." Brin does not elaborate on what sites do cooperate, since that would be "secondhand rumors".
What would Google do when they would have to choose between access to China or compromising their searches? Brin: "There are difficult questions, difficult challenges. Sometimes the "Don’t be evil" policy leads to many discussions about what exactly is evil. One thing we know is that people can make better decisions with better information. Google is a useful tool in people’s lives. There are extreme cases, we’re told, when Google has saved people’s lives. "