Does Brazil Have It In for Google?
Reuters has a story today about Brazillian authorities filing for permission to sue Google, alleging the company is withholding user info required for a criminal investigation. Brazilian authorities want Google to turn over info from Orkut, the G Poppa's social networking site, which Brazil believes is being used for organized crime and child pornography. The prosecutors want Google to pay about $61 million and, if the company refuses to hand over the info, for Google's Brazillian unit to be dissolved. Google's continuing difficulties in Brazil highlight the difficulties facing the search and advertising giant as its applications are adopted in other countries, which enforce differing sets of legal standards. Google has run up against those different standards with Agence France Presse, Louis Vuitton, and censorship issues in China. Brazil first approached Google over crime and child porn problems starting in March. In May, continuing to work with police. A few drug pushers using Orkut were arrested in July. Orkut has also suffered from hacker attacks on users' bank accounts. Google announced today that it has joined two industry initiatives to combat child pornography: The Technology Coalition and the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography. The initiatives are funded with The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). P.S. Google isn't the only company having problems in Brazil. Last year, Microsoft started promoting a Portugese version of Windows XP in Brazil, but the country's government is unabashedly pro-open source. MS has since started a few trials in Brazil, but I'm told it's very slow-going. |
Comments (9)
I also reported on this story, and I feel that Google may cave into Brazil's demands, not because of Orkut, but because of it's mini project Joga.com which it is probably being paid a fortune by NikeFootball.com . Although Brazil would lose out to Banning Google (it may start an underground campaign against the state) Google would lose much more financially because of this.
Posted by Darnell (Inside Orkut) | August 23, 2006 10:07 AM
What the Brazilian government is threatening to do is to close Google's local offices, not ban Orkut or Google services. They know there's not much they can do against it, but they want the local Google branch to be held responsible by the data they're keeping. The local branch just sells ad space or something to that effect. Orkut in Brazil is a very special case. Everybody uses it all the time - it's like MySpace is in the USA, I think. The vast majority of Orkut's users are from Brazil. On my college, you'll find people surfing Orkut just about all the time. And it WAS being used for a lot of crap - exchanging children porn, selling drugs, setting up street races, etc. People involved on those crimes were pretty ironic about it too, saying the government couldn't do jack shit against them, so they'd continue to do their business on Orkut (they were interviewed by a few newspapers). Most of the local press started reporting on this a few months ago, though, so they have probably stopped and moved on to myspace, friendster, or some other similar website. I can understand Google's stand on this, as they want to remain independent, keeping their user data free from other companies or governments, etc. But when people post stuff as "email me a kid porn pic and I'll email you one back in exchange" or similar stuff anjd have communities just for this sort of activities, it's where this rule isn't being used to protect users but rather to be harmful, IMO.
Posted by Zeh | August 23, 2006 11:48 AM
Orkut is not a "standard" Google project and, it become popular in Brazil by accident. Google could finish Orkut forever, without any market loose for that. It become a lot of crap, indeed. And, Brazilian government is ruled by a pathetic ideological leftists idiots, giving aways a step back in technology. When the entire world is embracing the Internet technology and Google is opening a lot of services worldwide, here we will stay in the beginning of 90's. That's the proud of the ideological leftist lines. They want to transform Brazil in a new Cuba, or North Korea. Unfortunately, our Internet users do to deserves that.
Posted by Moyzes | August 24, 2006 7:50 AM
This, from the country that brought us the samba and death metal band Sepultura.
Posted by Google Watch | September 1, 2006 1:30 PM
This, from the country that brought us the samba and death metal band Sepultura.
Posted by Google Watch | September 1, 2006 1:31 PM
This, from the country that brought us the samba and death metal band Sepultura.
Posted by Google Watch | September 1, 2006 1:37 PM
This, from the country that brought us the samba and death metal band Sepultura.
Posted by Google Watch | September 1, 2006 1:41 PM
This, from the country that brought us the samba and death metal band Sepultura.
Posted by Google Watch | September 1, 2006 1:44 PM
Google said it will divulge a "small and narrow" amount of data to Brazilian authorities after the government...
Posted by Google Watch | September 5, 2006 10:12 AM