Google co-founder Sergey Brin says he is disappointed in Microsoft for speaking out "against freedom of speech and human rights simply in order to contradict Google."
The comments came during an interview with The Guardian. Brin is calling on Washington to take a stand against China"s Internet censorship. He believes the U.S. should make it a high priority and to act against Beijing"s restrictions. The country"s prohibition of sites, often referred to as the Great Firewall of China, halts access to a wide range of Western sites including YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.
Brin singled out Microsoft stating "I"m very disappointed for them in particular," he said. "As I understand, they have effectively no market share – so they essentially spoke against freedom of speech and human rights simply in order to contradict Google." The comments were a reaction to Microsoft chairman and co-founder Bill Gates" comments in January. "You"ve got to decide: do you want to obey the laws of the countries you"re in or not?" Gates told ABC"s Good Morning America earlier this year.
Google said on Monday that the company would no longer censor search results in China and re-directed its Google.cn domain to Hong Kong. China reacted by stating Google is "totally wrong" to stop censoring results and began blocking some Hong Kong Google search results.