Google Shareholders to Vote On Proposed Human Rights Panel
Investor Proposals Would Resist Censorship, Set Up Panel

By Ari Levy
Bloomberg News
Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Google investors proposed that the company create a committee on human rights and be forbidden from engaging in censorship.

Google will let shareholders vote on the measures at its May 8 annual meeting, according to a regulatory filing yesterday.

The proposals follow efforts by the Chinese government to tighten control of Internet content. China blocked Google's YouTube video-sharing Web site this month after the biggest pro-independence protests in 20 years began in Tibet. YouTube also has been blocked in Turkey for showing images that the government found disrespectful to the country's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Harrington Investments is seeking the creation of a committee on human rights that would recommend policies and provide operating expenses necessary to review Google's practices in the United States and abroad.

The New York City comptroller's office and St. Scholastica Monastery recommended that investors vote for rules that would force the company to "resist demands for censorship" and document cases in which it complies with censorship requests. The shareholders also are asking Google not to identify users in countries where political speech can be a crime and to inform customers of its data-retention policies.

Google recommended that shareholders vote against both proposals.