Chapter 6 | Question 2 | GuGe: Googles Moral Dilemma in China

[Sean Hadley]

Google executives in China worked hard to maintain common grounds between Google Corporation and Chinese Government that was too mutually exclusive. Part of that lead Google to compromise some of it values. Google claimed that doing so is better for Chinese customers than not offering them the service at all. Did Google make a good ethical judgment in this regard? Or Google should've strongly defended its values and a more ethical decision would've been insisting to have no restrictions as a condition to offer Google search in China?

[Christopher Simpson]

I think that Google did what they had to do to be able to operate in China. It was very obvious the entire time that the government favored Baidu, and that Google had to actively work to try to be seen as positive in the Government's eyes. It is very hard to make ethical judgments when many aspects of what you are doing violates your ethics, such as paying the internet cafes, censorship etc Google's values are only ethical to us because we, as westerns accept them as ethical.  There are many things that westerners do that China probably sees as unethical, which Google would have to deal with if they wanted to be seen as ethical by the Chinese. I think that ethical clash, and constantly having to fight over completely different values is why Google eventually left China, especially since the demands were getting increasingly more restrictive. The confirmed Chinese Government attack on Google certainly did not help out either.

[abartleKU]

Google wanted to enter into what is saw as a very lucrative market in China. "Hindsight is 20/20" is what people say - but it seems to me that Google did not do a thorough analysis of the Chinese market and culture before starting business there. China favors Chinese-companies over foreign ones. It may have helped Google's business with China if Google leaders spent more time living in China and learning all the complexities of its internet. It's possible that Google execs thought that once they got into China that they could change the tight censorship and other government activities that really amount to spying on people. And being the first foreign company (I think) to enter the Chinese internet playing field, I think most people thought that if anyone could pull it off, Google could. Today we see signs of a deteriorating relationship that Google has with China due to the censorship and hacking/cyber attacks. Just recently, Google started displaying security warnings on .cn websites. This action signifies Google's disapproval of the Chinese government's policies. Google also posts a "transparency" report on its site by country. https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/government/CN/  This Transparency site is a way for Google to provide information to the public to explain how it handles request for information from nations.They have a note on there to state that they cannot provide any data between 2009-2010 because they were operating a joint venture with them. 

On Tuesday, March 31, 2015 at 7:00:29 PM UTC-5, Sean Hadley wrote:

[Melania Piedra Barrera]

I believe that the decision of making this deal with China, more than an ethical matter was also a business matter.  I think that, at this point of Google history, they were already making decisions as a company and not just like the idealistic idea that they were at the beginning, China is too big to be left aside.

[Sean Hadley]

I like your comments Christopher. I believe that Google was being played by the Chinese Government to put on a facade of being more open while at the same time making sure that Google would eventually give up and leave. 

[Sean Hadley]

Your comments definitely sum up Google's situation in China. In my opinion, they were just being played by the Communist Chinese government to get the propaganda value (and as much cash) from Google as possible.