I think that's a false argument. If someone came to you and said "this village is dying of thirst, I want you to drill a well for them," and you had the means

I think that's a false argument. If someone came to you and said "this village is dying of thirst, I want you to drill a well for them," and you had the means to do it, you probably would. Now, if that same person said "your well can provide water for the village, but we want you to add a small amount of drugs to the water, to keep the villagers satisfied with their meager existence," you'd probably tell them to go to hell. That was the choice Google had: either offer drugged water or offer no water at all. They chose to offer no water at all. The great thing they are doing is creating publicity so that the average chinese netizen surely knows they are getting censored results. Btw, apologies if you are not, but your posts in this thread come off as propaganda from nationalists in PRC. Your english, however, is good enough that this is probably not the case.