Vaibhav’s Blog

Google should be congratulated on taking such a tough stance against China. As announced on Google Blogs on 22 March, Google Inc. has closed down its China (People’s Republic of China referred as PRC here onwards) portal www.google.cn and has started redirecting visitors to www.google.hk, its Hong Kong portal. Google had earlier declared that it will stop censoring search results in China and this decision is in line with implementing its promise.

PRC has always put several restrictions on MNCs operating in the country. One of most bitter is the censorship. Since China remains world’s biggest Internet markets, U.S. companies have always accepted these restrictions and rules. Google also had (unwillingly?) abided by search censorship rules so far, against to its own policy of compromising search results. This included blocking search keywords for words blacklisted by PRC.

But recently there was case of hacking Gmail accounts of some of human rights activists from China. Google accused that Chinese government organized these attacks. Naturally, Chinese government rejected this claim as baseless accusation. In return of this, Google announced that it will stop censoring all search results. Only way to do so as per Chinese law of the land was to close the Chinese version of the portal and redirect users somewhere else. PRC has to take decision now to block Google Hong Kong from Chinese IPs. It was very courageous decision as it is going to cost the company lot in terms of search revenue. Google has at the same time posed itself as a company which can sacrifice in keeping its founding principles and promises made, which hardly any other US corporation can do, and especially with China.

Impact of this decision on Google operations can be severe. What will be future of its advertisers who have registered with Google China is unclear. Even though Google maintains that it will continue its R&D presence and Sales forces in, how much favor it now receives from PRC is a big question. What will happen to its employees if PRC bans the Google operations? From its blog Google has already declared that none of its China employees are behind this decision and it is solely the US executive decision in a poor attempt to shield its employees and properties from PRC wrath.

Also, Google has entered into smartphone market partnering with OEMs like HTC and Samsung. It is unclear what will be future of Google’s mobile operating system Android in this scenario. Will this decision impact its Sales in China? Will other OEMs be so much accommodative in respecting Google’s principles and ethics against probable profit opportunities in biggest Mobile market in the world?

Question is why Google had accepted these in first place? What happened to Google’s initial argument – “While removing search results is inconsistent with Google’s mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission”? Was Google tempted by the Market earlier and it now realized it cannot accommodate any further restrictions? Was it because of its failure in competing with Baidu?

Overall, closing operations to remove censorship in response to cyber-attacks looks very disproportionate. Even though decision is courageous, right and must deserve appreciation from preachers of the free world, the question remains unanswered “why now”?