Not Evil, But Not Above a Little PR

Google has taken quite a bit of flack lately for its decision to 'censor' its Chinese website (purging search results of rows of tanks sitting in Tiananmen Square, for example). I'm not here to comment on the relative merits of that decision (or how Google is just the latest example in a long line of compromises that western businesses have made to do business with the Middle Kingdom).

Rather, there's another article that caught my attention. Apparently Google has removed a specific BMW page from its search results because it redirected searchers to another page with flashier advertising.

The article strikes me not for being significant, but for being incredibly banal. I can only imagine that this same scenario plays out hundreds of times per day with companies that are far less well-known. So why did Google kick out a press release on action with BMW now?

Perhaps the company that has famously ignored the whims of the stock market is trying to burnish its image. As the old saying goes: 'If you're going to bow to the Chinese, you can at least stick it to the Germans.'