Chapter 6 | Question 3 | GuGe: Googles Moral Dilemma in China

[Sean Hadley]

There are many circumstances as to the reasons that led to Google's shutdown in China. It seemed to be a fierce and ongoing battle since the beginning, and all the way to the end. Challenges included maintaining Google's values of openness in a highly controlled country, gaining a sufficient market share and become the leader, and becoming a target of sophisticated cyber-attacks and actually significantly breached by one of them. Under these circumstances, and if you were the president of Google, would you also choose to shutdown Google? Or what else would you do?

[Jake Montgomery]

That's a tough question. From a business perspective there's a point where you simply have to cut your losses and move on. Fighting a huge country is expensive. From an ethical perspective I'd want to keep fighting China, but the practicality of it all is unreasonable. Google is/was trying to continue cutting edge development as well as turn a profit. It's hard to do that when you are spending all of your time on fighting cyber-attacks and trying to break into a market where many do not even want you. I'm sure the president was conflicted about his choice, but I think it was the only reasonable one to make.

tl;dr

I'd also shutdown Google in China.

[Sean Hadley]

Jake,

I agree with you as to having to fight a country like China that has a large standing army. The costs in both humanity and to the economy would be devastating. (Which is why we did not invade Japan at the latter-end of WWII...the costs of invasion would have been astronomical to say the least!) However, as history has shown, when a country, like the USA has stood up for freedom and human rights, eventually dictatorial and oppressive governments like China do fall. (The fall of the Soviet Union and its puppet governments are a historical example.)

Are there people in China who really want to have freedom? I'm sure that you would agree with me that that there are people over there who do want freedom. How could Google reach them? Could Google partner up with the US government in the same way to help bring down Communism? Theoretically they could. However, I don't believe that there is a political (or corporate) will to do so.

[sandra vega carrero]

This question is very hard to answer. And I think Brin and the whole Company were very conflicted, before choosing to shutdown Google in China. They spent lots of time, money and effort,  fighting for their believes, and the opportunity that they might have in such a big country.

I believe that before shuting down, they did lots of meetings, trying to decide wheter it was good or not to keep fighting. That decision was not made but only one person, so probably I would do the same....  

[Sean Hadley]

I agree with you Sandra! It wasn't an easy decision to shut down the Chinese market for Google--or for any company wanting to do business over there. The costs were just too high! Thanks for your comments.