Behind Google's Recent Decision About China

yuhong writes "This article by The Independent takes a look at what is behind the recent decisions made by Google regarding China, particularly regarding Sergey Brin, born in the USSR, [and whose origins] played a big part in this decision. From the article: 'He's always had an emotional tug within him, saying "we shouldn't be making compromises," says Ken Auletta, the author of Googled: The End of the World As We Know It.'"

Comments

Well yes... but:

[saibot834]

If only they would have stood up for free speech at the beginning, and not only after they found themselves with a disappointing 29% market share.

Re:Well yes... but:

[eldavojohn]

If only they would have stood up for free speech at the beginning, and not only after they found themselves with a disappointing 29% market share.

Er, Baidu had 1) been operating for seven years already when Google.cn was founded in China and 2) had the benefits of being a Chinese company that no doubt had leaders more in tune with Chinese culture.

Pick a country foreign to you. Now give your competitors a seven year head start. Now try to enter the market. Now tell me that 29% is "disappointing." Has anyone come even close to that against Google in the US?

I'd say 29% is pretty astonishing. What were you expecting?

Re:Well yes... but:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the point. Fighting an uphill battle and then at some point claiming to pull out due to freedom of speech issues isn't quite as believable as a world leader in search not entering a market due to freedom of speech issues.

Re:Well yes... but:

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If only they would have stood up for free speech at the beginning, and not only after they found themselves with a disappointing 29% market share.

Microsoft would kill for a 29% market share of the search business in the USA.

Re:Well yes... but:

[NeoSkandranon]

Re: Baidu, It has less to do with "leaders in tune" and more to do with nationalism really.

That google was able to establish the share they did in the face of being foreigners is astonishing indeed.

Re:Well yes... but:

[jbezorg]

AC:

That's not the point. Fighting an uphill battle and then at some point claiming to pull out due to freedom of speech issues isn't quite as believable as a world leader in search not entering a market due to freedom of speech issues.

From the article:

Could Beijing really countenance a filter-free search engine? Probably not. But it also knows that driving Google from China would be a public relations catastrophe.

I think Google entering the market and then leaving has a more profound effect since that 36% of the population will actually have a tangible experience to relate to. What may happen is that Google may be able to leverage this so that censorship is less restrictive on google.cn. and in order to compete Baidu would have to do the same.

From the article:

It was Schmidt who put the business case for Google to expand into China: with 384 million internet users, it is the world's biggest digital market – of which Google has grasped about 36 per cent since 2006. But Brin and Page spent a year weighing the pros and cons of the decision on what they called their "evil scale" before approving the launch of Google.cn.

It's a pragmatic approach to "do no evil" rather than an idealistic one and in my opinion a better one since the idealistic approach would have made less progress or any progress at all.

Re:Well yes... but:

[blind biker]

That's not the point. Fighting an uphill battle and then at some point claiming to pull out due to freedom of speech issues isn't quite as believable as a world leader in search not entering a market due to freedom of speech issues.

It is exactly the opposite: claiming not to enter a market (where they would face an uphill battle to get even the tiniest marketshare) due to freedom of speech issues is much less believable than pulling out after achieving a very respectable 29%, after all the money and time invested to get to those 29%.

And you were modded "insightful"? Mods must be smoking something powerful.

China Betrayed Them

[Doc Ruby]

The compromise that Google made with China was agreeing to Chinese censorship in exchange for China's protection from privacy invasion beyond that allowed by the laws Google agreed to follow. Then Google saw that protection was either useless against Chinese hackers, or betrayed by the Chinese government itself (or both).

When you pay the mafia for "protection" but you get broken into anyway, you stop paying the mafia. If you can. We'll see whether Google is tougher than China's mafia government.

Re:China Betrayed Them

[elrous0]

Yep, this wasn't some moral decision. Google was perfectly happy to play ball with China until they stole some of Google's propriety code (and hence threatened their bottom line). If China had never threatened Google financially, they would happily have gone on turning over names and censoring the web indefinitely.

Re:China Betrayed Them

[Vintermann]

> they stole some of Google's propriety code

I haven't seen anyone saying they did this. What they did was attack some of Google's customers, specifically some who work for human rights in China. Granted, since it was a hacking attempt at Google itself, they could probably have gone for code instead, but that's not what happened.

China's reputation for industrial espionage may or may not be especially deserved. Their human rights record, however, there is little dispute of.

Re:Hate google or not

[OakDragon]

Thank you, that's an excellent response to all the China v. America doom-saying that's going on these days. Twenty years ago - and I am old enough to remember it first hand - it was Japan that was going to bury us. There are very good reasons that China's prospects look bleak rather than promising.

What the hell is with the summaries lately?!

[Dorkmaster Flek]

particularly regarding Sergey Brin was born in the USSR which played a big part in this decision.

Holy shit, can we please proofread summaries before submitting stories? How the hell did you people pass high school English?

Re:Hate google or not

[javilon]

On the other hand, Microsoft is quite happy collaborating with the Chinese government in clamping on freedom of expression.

If only for that reason, you'll never catch me using bing.

There are the moral reasons and also the fact that information about you can end up in the hands of Chinese officials. Of course the later is more important for the Chinese population living abroad and for companies competing against Chinese products (most of the big ones if not all)