“Internet Freedom”? Google Making (and Then Unmaking) Itself as Censor in Chief of the Internet: And What This Tells Us About Global Internet Governance

There is in the Internet and particularly Internet Governance space the notion being circulated that somehow private corporations and particularly the major Internet corporations should have significant stake in the policy decisions which are beginning to pop up with increasing regularity (of which issues of censorship certainly are one). This particular episode is to my mind quite revealing of the limitations of that type of involvement given the way in which the policy decisions were made/unmade; imposed/suppressed; all without a publicly visible process and all in a matter of hours with no visible human intervention (or presence) at all.