BBC News Business writes,
At the company’s annual general meeting, the censorship proposal won only about 15% of support while only 4% backed the idea of a human rights committee. The internet firms argue it is better to offer Chinese users some information than none at all.
This is similar to the decision that Google made recently to allow China to censor results in Google.cn. The decision to compromise is motivated by a combination of a) a desire not to isolate China and its citizenry by not compromising with the Chinese government and b) a fear of missing out on market share in a potentially huge and constantly growing market. Beijing 2008 will be interesting, but I doubt China will air it completely live, so they can cut out any public incidents, sort of like when Kanye West said that George Bush doesn’t like black people (seek 1:20).
read the BBC article:
and here is a more thorough explanation from Ars Technica:
