In 2006 Google traded in their corporate slogan ‘Don’t be evil’ for a more flexible standard of ‘Look at the bright side’ when they accepted the Chinese government’s censorship regime upon their Chinese operation. They suggested that the benefits of increased access for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed the moral problems of covert censorship.
But yesterday, Google announced some big changes to their Chinese operations following a ‘highly sophisticated and targeted attack’ on their corporate infrastructure in December 2009. According to Google, the attacks had the primary goal of accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
In light of these attacks, Google has decided that it is unwilling to continue to censor its results on Google.cn. If the Chinese government decides that the uncensored version of the site is illegal, Google has said that it will cease Chinese operations entirely.
While Google doesn’t enjoy the market share in China that it has in other places in the world, it’s 30% share of the internet advertising market is not to be sneezed at. Shares in China’s leading search engine, the Chinese-run Baidu, have shot up 15% since Google’s announcement.
At this early stage, it is difficult to determine whether Google is going to take the multi billion dollar exit strategy. But we do know that negotiations with the Chinese government do not normally occur by applying pressure in a public, English-language blog post. It has been suggested that Google is burning bridges with China, and making a big statement to buy good will elsewhere in the world.
