Google in Israel

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, announced the establishment of an R&D center in Israel.

Brin and co-founder Larry Page were among the more visible participants at the economic conference. Both have forged tight links with Israeli Internet entrepreneurs… [T]he company had recently recruited a large number of academics, engineers, mathematicians, statisticians and economists to further develop the company’s search engine algorithm and its smart ad systems on the Net.

Clearly, they did not read Mazin Qumsiyeh’s article titled “Boycott Israel” which appeared in Global Agenda, a magazine published by the forum and distributed to participants. The article equated Israel’s policies toward Palestinians with apartheid and said countries should divest from Israel and impose a boycott. Of course as soon as the article came to light, the organizers of the WEF, who allegedly missed the article in the editorial process, pulled it and issued profuse apologies.

“There was an unacceptable failure in the editorial process, specifically an insufficiently short period for review of content, for which there is no excuse,” Schwab said. “The article is totally in contradiction to my own, and the forum’s, mission and values.”

In the meantime, Google’s newly minted Chinese portal continues to toe the Chinese government line by censoring content that the crusty old Communist mandarins deem to be offensive.

“I didn’t think I would come to this conclusion-but eventually I came to the conclusion that more information is better, even if it is not as full as we would like to see,” Brin told Reuters at the World Economic Forum.

So much for Google’s pledge “not to police or censor content” and uh… so much for Jewlicious China. Damn. Having principles sucks. But you do sleep better at night.

Zzzzzzz ….