Google shareholders vote down anti-censorship proposal

Google shareholders rejected anti-censorship resolution during the company's annual stockholder's meeting on May 10. This decision came after Google's board of directors recommended on April 4 that the company's shareholders vote down the anti-censorship proposal.

The proposal stated that "technology companies in the United States have failed to develop adequate standards by which they can conduct business with authoritarian governments while protecting human rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression".

Rejecting the proposal implies that the shareholders approve of Google's censorship practices such as removing results from its www.google.cn.

On May 11, one day after Google's annual stockholder's meeting, Peter Fleischer, Google's Global Privacy Counsel, said on Google's official blog, "[c]ompanies like Google are trying to be responsible corporate citizens, and sometimes we are told to do different things by different government entities, or to follow conflicting legal obligations. It's hard enough to get different government entities to talk to each other inside one country. When you multiply this by all the countries where Google must comply with the laws, the potential conflicts are enormous. Nonetheless, Google is committed to providing its users around the world with one consistent high level of data protection."