Google vs. China — Who's Got the Most To Lose?

Barence writes "Google looks set to pull out of China, but who will suffer most? The search engine or China? At last week's South by Southwest conference, Kaiser Kuo, a former director of digital strategy for the Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency in China, gave an illuminating talk that examined the history of Google and other Western internet firms in China, their relationship with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the likely outcomes of the current stalemate. Kuo explained that Google had earned the respect of the tech-savvy urban elite by protecting users, making censorship clear and by protecting its employees in China. That means Google is walking away from a 35% market share, which contains a far wealthier demographic than local provider Baidu. The Government, meanwhile, which has been very pro-competition, is about to hand a complete monopoly to Baidu, harm its international standing and the development of net technologies in the country. Is it a lose-lose situation?"

Comments

Breaking news!

[Zocalo]

Not even a link to a story yet, but the ticker on the BBC News home page is reporting that Google has announced that it has stopped censoring its search engine in China. Since China has already made her position clear on this eventuality I suppose this must mean that Google believes that it might as well be hanged for a wolf, than a lamb.

I'm nipping out for some popcorn; the next couple of days are going to be really interesting...

Re:Breaking news!

[phantomfive]

It is a brilliant move that takes advantage of Hong Kong not having speech restrictions, yet also being a part of China. They are redirecting all their traffic to the google.com.hk website.

The great thing is that China has based their entire argument on the fact that 'Google must obey the law,' and if they don't, they are not upholding the harmony of the country. Now Google has found a solution that is 100% legal. They are drawing attention to the fact that Hong Kong doesn't need censorship, and yet they are still able to maintain 'harmony'. The government is going to have to come up with a new argument for why they should censor Google's search engine. It will be interesting to see what they do.