Google Apps in China? A response for EdTechRoundup

I was informed via a pingback of a post by a Chinese educator who had picked up on EdTechRoundup’s upcoming interview with the Google Apps team. He was impressed by the questions on EdTechRoundup’s wiki page that many different educators have submitted, agreeing with at least 10 of them. Two parts of his post stood out for me… 🙂

First of all, we’ve got it easy in the UK:

After reading questions, i have the sense that my colleagues in U.K. are far more fortunate than those in China, since they can appreciate the operation of google’s phisophy without needing to worry some of the google services can not be accessed, which is exactly what’s taking place in China.

I get the feeling that our Chinese friend (who I presume is called Wu He Ping from his del.icio.us account) wants to also say that the political situation in China is very different. Students in the UK can say pretty much anything they like, through Google Apps and suchlike. That’s not the case in China. 🙁

Wu He Ping finishes with the following question, which could perhaps be asked by the EdTechRoundup interviewers on his behalf:

How can google improve its public relation with chinese government so that more people will appreciate the services that google provides for educators?

In other words, how can Google avoid another PR disaster like when they agreed to censor the search results Chinese citizens obtained from their service. I agree that Google need to improve their position first. Perhaps International and American schools in China using Google services (such as the sterling work being done by educators such as Jeff Utecht) can lead the way… 😀