Dear Google Research:

I read your blog by Peter Norvig with interest. Thank you for wanting to "make a difference" and to "change the world". The world urgently needs more people willing to do so.
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/

Here's how you CAN make a big difference and change the world for the better.

I was greatly disapointed to hear Google's representative state that Google has no plans at all to create a tool for the Chinese people to safely and easily search and read the web, and to safely and easily write blogs and email. This was at the Congressional hearing on internet censorship by American companies on February 15, 2006.

Hearing statements and video:
http://wwwc.house.gov/international_relations/afhear.htm

In the hearing, Congressman Chris Smith made the point that with the money the internet companies are making from assisting in the censorship of free speech in China, the least the companies could do would be to build a way to let the Chinese bypass the censorship.

There is no better way to "change the world" and "make a difference" than to help the Chinese people become free.

New toolbars and gizmos won't change the world at all. Inventing new mapping systems can be important and save some lives, but won't greatly change the world.

Even new methods of translating documents won't change the world if it's only translating government-approved documents in China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Vietnam, etc.

If China's censorship is uncontested and continues to be strengthened, it will spread until all dictatorships and semi-free countries are cut off from the rest of the world on the web by American-made hardware and software.

There are a few software products out there to help the Chinese and others. Tor is one, but it is created by volunteers with limited resources, and if the Chinese censors succeed in blocking it, they may not have the resources to succeed again.

So how about taking on a REAL challenge? Invent a way to render current and future web censorship methods completely useless--something which can't be blocked or detected!

Help the Chinese, Iranians, Vietnamese, Saudis, and others suffering under censorship to have their human rights of free speech on the web.

Then they will be free, and YOU will have helped.

I think you will agree that facilitating freedom is the greatest way to change the world for the better. People don't starve in free countries. People aren't massacred in free countries. Free countries don't have wars with other free countires. Free countries have fewer problems with poor health and sanitation. And in free countries, people can join you in taking action to change the world for the better.

If the bean counters get nervous and say that bypassing censorship would offend China, and they would revoke your license, then do it in secret or fund others. But please, in the name of humanity, "be different" and just do it!

Thank you very much.