Google has had enough of authoritarian China… On 22nd March, Google redirected its search engine, Google.cn, to a Hong Kong-based server called Google.com.hk. The company also announced that it has stopped censoring its search engine for the Chinese market. This step was a culmination of four months of tussle that had been going on between Google and the Chinese Government. The conflict began in January when Google made public the news of an unidentified hacker who tried to hack into Google’s servers. The scene became volatile when Google uncovered highly sophisticate cyber attacks from China that were aimed at the email accounts of Chinese human activists. Following this, the company threatened to shut its operations in China.
Google had ventured into the Chinese market on 19 July 2005 when they announced plans to open a research and development centre in China. The company launched its Chinese language search engine after agreeing with the Chinese government to censor websites for content banned under the Chinese law. But this arrangement did not go with Google’s vision of providing uncensored access to their services to as many people around the world as possible. This conflict in the company’s stand was causing friction in the higher management too. Finally, Google took the sensible decision of providing increased access to information for people in China through a legal route. Although, a blog post by one Google official indicated that the company was well aware of the fact that China may any time block access to their services.
People are speculating how this step will affect Google’s revenue. The company was just controlling about a third of China's search market due to the tough competition offered by entrenched search rivals such as Baidu. Google’s main source of revenue was from other businesses. Thus, considering the revenue implications, Google has decided to continue its wider business operations in China for now. These include ad sales business, its Android mobile phone operating system and its Chrome browser business. To let go such lucrative avenues is definitely not a wise thing to do for any company.
China stands by its assumption that this episode will not have any impact on the business environment for Western companies in China. On the contrary, many experts are of the view that in case Google completely moves out of China, the country will send wrong signals to other companies. China stands to suffer from public relations position. Another story doing rounds is that soon Dell Corporation may also shift to another area that offers a safer business environment. Is this episode going to lead way for other companies also? Will China benefit from staying away from western capitalists? Let’s wait and watch…
0 comments:
Post a Comment