Yesterday, Google closed its search engine in China after two months of threatening to leave due to censorship issues and Chinese hackers. The google.cn address does not work anymore, and users from mainland China are now directed to an uncensored Google search engine site in Hong Kong. The move has spurred conflict between the international company and China. Chinese officials appear angered, citing that Google broke its promise to retain agreed upon censorship contracts. However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that it would handle the act "according to the law," and that the move should not affect Chinese-U.S. relationships. Google's chief legal officer said that he hoped "the Chinese government respects our decision."
Google's withdrawal from China is only partial, for now. Although the search engine no longer functions, Google will maintain their online maps and music services, as well as its research, development, and sales teams on the Chinese mainland.
Although censored, many believed that Google's entrance into China's market would allow Chinese citizens access to much more outside information. It symbolized China's growing acceptance of foreign influence on its citizens. Now that Google has removed itself from China, many Chinese have grown worried, especially students and professors who have lost access to Google's vast resources.
Looking from a business point of view, should Google have pulled out of China (keep in mind that only a small share of Google's overall profit is from China)? From a political and social point of view, was this a wise decision? Should this even be considered from the latter two points of views, or should it be contained purely as a business matter?
To read more about the official dealings, please read Google's blog post, with details about the situation.
10 comments:
Well, since Google is a business and not a governmental agency, this should probably be treated as simply a business matter and not one of politics.
However, it does bring up the issue of China's censorship programs which have been in place for a long time. While the Chinese government should not get angry at Google for leaving, it should reconsider it's strict censorship laws. As China becomes a world superpower and more involved in international trade, they, need to considering opening up not just trade routes for goods, but information as well.
~Victor H
I'm a little confused about something. Did people on the Chinese mainland always have access to the uncensored Google search engine site in Hong Kong? Because if so, even if the Google.cn search engine was censored, couldn't people on the Chinese mainland just use the Hong Kong search engine instead. It seems like in that case, China's censorship laws seem almost irrelevant.
Thanks for this post. ;). I don't think its the fact that people can't get to censored websites but that China is actually trying to censor it. From my intuition, some people (especially the lazy ones) believe the first thing they read which would be treated to fit the Chinese government's use. If people aren't aware or care or have faith in the government, they won't be exposed to all different sides of the issue.
People in China could always access google.hk or google.com. However, whenever they go there, they're just greeted with a bunch of links that don't work.
I think this is a smart business move by Google. Google still has its sales team in China and it will continue to sell advertisements there. Even if its growth potential has been somewhat stymied by this decision, it was unlikely that Google was ever going to actually attain more market share than the homegrown CCP-supported Chinese search engine, Baidu. Plus, Google gets a ton of positive press out of this.
I agree with Francis in that Google has gotten a lot of publicity out of this, but he and Victor are right. This seems like more of a business move than anything else. True, it does bring up the whole issue of China's censorhip, but the fact that China has its own search engine, and people in mainland China can access google.hk sort of deflate the situation.
I think that if Google and China previously both agreed to a contract then both sides of the agreements should have been upheld, since after all, that is typically how most contracts work.
It is unfortunate that people, such as students and professors, are also now unable to access the wide variety of resources that they previously had access too, since it limits their resources and ways for them to attain a multitude of information.
Despite this, I think that if a company the size of Google felt their was an issue with hackers and censorship, they must have done what they felt was best for the company as a whole. Still, I feel like maybe they could have negotiated and come to some kind of compromise before just shutting down their server.
I agree with Francis that this was a smart business move on the part of Google. Mostly because as Julia said, China was only a very small portion of Google's profit. But even knowing that Google is a business and a massive one, I still feel that there will be a negative effect upon the social and political area. In general U.S relations with China is currently tense as China is U.S's most competitive country. Even though the Chinese people can access the Hong Kong Google website, I feel that the Chinese with consider this decision as a slap in their face. And I do believe that it will unlike the article said, ultimately affect Chinese-U.S relationships.
I think this is a very significant event because google is a multi national company.. especially to pull out of china is big because china has a huge growing economy.
having a google in china seems kinda of contradictory. Google is a search engine where you can search up and look anything up. however, china has so many censorship laws. i read an article saying that a female in china was arrested for putting up tapes of herself doing promiscuous actions. The web is so closely monitored in china, its kind of scary.
Well, google is a big company and losing one of the biggest countries out there will ultimately affect google's financial status. However, if Google wasn't treated well in China, then I think they did the right thing by leaving. I agree with Catherine. If China and Google signed a contract initially, maybe things would have worked out. Oh well, Google is still a big company and China is doing pretty well.
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