Once upon a time the Internet was a haven for freedom. You could say what you want, when you wanted, to whomever you wanted. Well all good things must come to an end. Because today another chunk of online rights have been ousted right under the feet of the Chinese people and possibly coming to a search engine near you!

Today Yahoo and MSN and various other companies signed a code of conduct rule for their blogging services in China. China says “this code of conduct has been put into place to protect the interests of our Chinese state.” The “Self-Discipline” pact, under which they pledged to “safeguard state and public interests,” according to the statement from the China Internet Society.

This pact “encourages” the internet firms to register the real names, addresses and any other personal details of the bloggers, and then keep this information. The companies have to delete and “illegal or bad messages”, according to a copy of the pact posted on the society’s site.

Along with sex and violence, China’s communist rulers have also deemed that opinions critical of it or the spreading of democratic ideology are not allowed.

US Internet companies such as Yahoo, Microsoft and Google have previously caused uproar abroad for bowing to the Chinese government’s demands by agreeing to censor websites and content banned by the nation’s propaganda chiefs. They have repeatedly insisted that they have no choice but to follow local rules and regulations in China.

The question I have is how long until this type of “pact” gets pushed through here?

A lot of people know how much I hate Google’s Adword system, but the thing is they make money and they help business’s make money, thus it is good business. I just don’t like the whole process probably because we here at TheGeekery are poor, their are lot of rumors around the net about foul play with Adwords and how Google manipulates the system as well but that is still under investigation. But I simply don’t understand this one….

Google is in the process of acquiring DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, but for some reason the FTC is already investigating them on antitrust violations just for this attempted acquisition. I understand that Google already has the largest market share for ad based e-marketing, but when Yahoo proposed its acquisition of Rights Media was proposed not to long ago it flew through the antitrust regulators stamp of approval process. The same thing happened when Microsoft proposed the acquisition of aQuantive a DoubleClick rival, no one complained no one whined. Why is Google taking so much flack for this, this is capitalism, this is big business.

The answer is in this quote

“Google, which dominates the business of placing text ads alongside search results and on sites across the Web, is expected to capture 27.4 percent of the $21.7 billion in United States online advertising in 2007, according to eMarketer, a research firm. The acquisition of DoubleClick would turn Google into a dominant player in the business of serving banners and other graphical ads that appear on Web sites.”

Yahoo, AT&T and dare I say Microsoft are afraid, very afraid. Google is starting to scare me as well, I just don’t understand how a company can spread the spectrum so wide across so many industry sectors.

Google, even though I do not enjoy some of your business models I do salute you for the massive kahoneys you have.

-TheGeek