I actually do not think A is the proper argument here.

Google providing a restricted search service is not doing a "bad thing." It will be a product that helps people find what they are looking for, which is a good thing.

At the same time, they are restricted from sharing certain information, a restriction that is applied blanketly to all of China's citizenry.

Imagine that there exists a prison wherein any prisoner can escape by simply knowing the escape passphrase.

One of the jobs in this prison is to walk around providing water to the prisoners, keeping them alive. Everyone in the prison is prevented from speaking the escape phrase, punishable by death.

You are a water provider in this prison. You know the escape phrase. You know that by doing your job, more prisoners are fed more quickly and are healthier and have better lives. But you know they would have even better ones if they could escape.

Would the moral thing to do to be to quit in protest and remove yourself from the equation, because you cannot speak the passphrase, which is a decision that ultimately helps no one?

Or would the moral thing be to continue providing a helpful service that prisoners need, meanwhile having access to the prisoners and the wardens, and being able to push for the ability to speak?

It seems to me that the providing of water and the ability to speak the passphrase are two separate things that you as a water-provider have the ability to do. And when you remove yourself from the prison on the absolutist moral basis, you leave the prisoners worse off in practical terms, for essentially no purpose.

I think in Google's case, it is helpful to identify what is the water and what is the unspeakable passphrase. Water is returning benign results, and the unspeakable passphrase is (separate & distinctly) returning censored results.

Providing water is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It is not aiding the prison in hurting its prisoners, it is keeping the prisoners alive and healthy. The citizens are permitted health, and it is a good thing to help them have it.

Providing benign search results is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It is not aiding China in censorship, it is keeping the citizenry within quick reach of benign information. It is a good thing to help them have that.

A bad thing for you as a water-provider to do would be to not provide water, or whack the prisoners with sticks.

A bad thing for Google to do as a search provider would be to not provide benign results, or to develop tools for forcing the Chinese to have access to less information than they currently do.

The providing of water is a good thing and is distinct and separate from bad things.

Not speaking the escape phrase is not a bad thing, because it is not your choice. It is forced on you by the context.

At worst, not speaking the escape phrase lets you continue to provide water. At best, while you're there, you can try to convince the warden to loosen up, possibly leading to more freedom.

I think the point here is that given the threat of force, morality is not absolute, it is contextual. When your options are morality vs. survival (or knowledge/life-promoting things), then your morality must be re-evaluated, because survival (and life-promoting things) are the goal of any framework that is actually moral. Returning benign search results is a good/life-promoting thing.

There is a large swath of search results which are very good for the Chinese to have access to, which enriches their lives, which Google can provide better than anyone else. This is the knowledge/life promotion on one side of the equation. On the other, many are holding an absolutist position that only complete uncensorship can be offered morally.

They are holding adherence to the morality in a specific context (the US/free speech), above the actual goal of the morality, which is life-promotion.

I argue that when a morality leads to the removal of good/life-promoting things in this way, it must be re-evaluated for the context, because it is no longer achieving its goal. We must see what parts of the morality we cannot apply because _it is not our choice whether or not to apply it_. We discover that within the context of the threat of force, it is acceptable to abide by that force, and provide a subset of results that is still helpful for people to have access to.

Morality only applies to decisions you can make within a context. If you don't enter that context, you can't claim to be doing anything moral. And if you do, the things that are not your decision cannot be part of your morality. Given what remains, you do the best you can.

This is why I think Google should enter China with a restricted search engine.