Microsoft president on China blocking Bing: Principles matter

Microsoft President Brad Smith told FOX Business on Thursday that its Bing search engine has been blocked in China.

“We are still working to find out,” Smith said during an exclusive interview with Maria Bartiromo at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It is definitely the case as you just said that people in China cannot access Bing.”

According to Smith, this isn’t the first time this has happened. In November the Skype internet phone call and messaging service disappeared from app stores.

“It happens periodically,” he said. “We operate in China but pursuant to some global principles, it’s called the Global Network Initiative in terms of how we manage censorship demands and the like. There are times when there are disagreements.”

Users performing searches on Bing’s China website from within China are reaching a page that says the server cannot be reached. But Smith is unsure of what Chinese leadership is exactly angry about.

“There are times when there are difficult negotiations with the Chinese government and we are still waiting to find out what this situation is about,” he said.

Smith also said that although the U.S. technology giant has been cooperating in accordance with government policy, there are certain instances where the company will stick to its own principles.

“Periodically there are issues that arise and sometimes those issues do lead to our service or some other services being blocked and you know it is an area where we understand we don’t have the same legal freedom that we do in other countries but at the same time we stick to our guns,” he said. “There are certain principles that we think are important to stand up for and we’ll go at times into the negotiating room and negotiations sometimes are pretty darn direct.”

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Smith added that there were other cases where Microsoft was forced to turn down deals over ethics.

“I think more than ever tech companies really need to think about these things, they need to be principled,” he said. “And you have to have a little moral courage in my view if you’re going to be in this business and really take care of your customers.”