Not only do they show at least some humanity (which is hard for a company of their size), but they've also got big balls.
It's interesting that while this may be a PR spin, few companies would have done it because the risks are much higher than the potential gains for shareholders.
"Losing" and "winning" aren't terribly relevant in a market. "Profitable" and "not profitable" are much more important. That's not really an answer to your question, but I've never understood why people think it's such a big deal that Google's not the biggest search engine in China.
Well, you have to admit that google's investors have a notion of how well it will be able to transfer its business to developing markets... and so with all its advantages if google can't take first place in china, what does that say about its fundamental ability in non-us markets?
I'd say that the perception that google will dominate search in worldwide markets is worth about $200 per share right now.
The Chinese government is the one trying to crack down. Google can choose to be complicit and stay, or fail to be complicit, and leave.
It is not Google's fault that the government is continuing to crack down. If the end result is lowered access to information, lay the blame at the feet of the proper people: the Party.
Incidentally, if China does decide to go culturally isolationist, that's the end of me worrying about them as an economic threat over the next thirty years. None of us is as strong as all of us. (No, not even having 1 billion people will count; the disadvantage of having one dominant closed culture will dominate in the information and idea era.)
In late 2008, just after the Beijing Summer Olympic games, the censoring took a turn for the worse, Mr. Brin says. Chinese authorities also began to tell Google it needed a number of additional licenses to operate its business, according to people familiar with the requests.
Last year, Google was further hamstrung when Beijing accused it of having too much pornography on its site and forced Google to disable some features for a period. Google's YouTube video service, which China had blocked periodically over the years, became inaccessible in the country.
Even if every word you say is true, I honestly don't care. I don't give any credit to Google for agreeing to censor on behalf of the Chinese government, and every second they continued I count as a complicity with a regime that has no respect for human rights. Even if the deal didn't change one iota, it was a shitty deal and they should have pulled out sooner.
But you forgot to mention that it is the Chinese communist party in the first place who blocks ordinary Chinese from obtaining information (and forcing others to do the same blocking). Let's talk about why Chinese netizens "can't have it all"...that's the fundamental problem, not Google. Really, why they can't have it all?
If someone came to you and said "this village is dying of thirst, I want you to drill a well for them," and you had the means to do it, you probably would. Now, if that same person said "your well can provide water for the village, but we want you to add a small amount of drugs to the water, to keep the villagers satisfied with their meager existence," you'd probably tell them to go to hell.
That was the choice Google had: either offer drugged water or offer no water at all. They chose to offer no water at all.
The great thing they are doing is creating publicity so that the average chinese netizen surely knows they are getting censored results.
Btw, apologies if you are not, but your posts in this thread come off as propaganda from nationalists in PRC. Your english, however, is good enough that this is probably not the case.
This is why I was pretty content with Google's original China stance; censor, but make the censoring obvious, arguably still adding net good for the average mainlander using its services.
If it wasn't for the cyber attacks, I'd agree that this was still the best and most balanced course to take since, as I said, it was still a net good for the average user. The attempts to extract human rights activist information from Google services did change my perception though; if working within the system is setting up scenarios like that one where activists' information can be compromised by attacks, then re-evaluation of the situation was in order. Though, good arguments can still be made in the other direction I think.
It is always a hard play if you think Google's action is some kind of sanction. But Google is still seeking a way to provide service to Chinese, just without restrictions.
