I was outraged to see senators criticizing Google CEO Eric Schmidt and other dot-com executives for filtering Internet searches and responding to Chinese warrants seeking the identity of dissidents using those services. Frankly, it's disingenuous for the U.S. to start complaining now. The fact is that the U.S. government, as well as the U.S. companies that preceded Yahoo and Google into the Chinese marketplace, have been coddling the Chinese government at every opportunity for well over a decade.

Senators who are now telling Google employees that they should risk going to jail previously stood by without paying even lip service to Chinese human rights violations, not to mention espionage against the U.S. and its companies. On top of that, they take no actions to actually free the dissidents in question. Congress is, in short, asking selected dot-com firms to take a political stand that the U.S. government is unwilling to take itself.

Likewise, most of the individuals who find it easy to condemn Google and Yahoo are doing so as they work on their computers, watch their TVs, listen to their iPods, and drive their cars -- all of which are likely built in, or constructed with significant parts from, China. They may think they're striking a noisy blow for freedom, but practically speaking most of them are making their biggest "statement" by further increasing the trade deficit.

Having spent time in China talking to the Chinese, it's clear to me that the boycotts that occurred after 1989's Tiananmen Square massacres resulted in significant damage to the Chinese economy and did create a reluctance to similar actions in the future. However, neither the U.S. government, nor its companies, nor its consumers have expressed similar concerns over anything else China has done since.

While it's easy to paint Google and Yahoo as villains, it's the lack of any other significant action by supposedly concerned legislators and consumers that makes for the real villains. Again, while I wholeheartedly disagree with China's harsh policies against dissent, China is a sovereign country that believes it is doing what is best for itself, and you haven't given Chinese leaders reason to do anything different.