As most have already heard, after attacks on its services, Google has halted its censorship of information from its search engine in China and has gone as far as stating that, if need be, will close out the google.cn Web site. The long term implications of this are going to set a precedent for the future of the control the Chinese government will have over its people and their ability to retrieve information. Also, there will be long term financial implications for Google.
China is the largest population to use Google's services. According to the Wall Street Journal, China has an estimated 360 million Internet users and about 700 million cell phone users. Google's 2010 revenue from China alone would reach roughly $310 million or 2% of Google's total revenue. That is a huge chunk of its overall usage and a large part of their revenue that some say, Google cannot afford to lose. Couple that with the impact of closing out that population to Google as it is introducing its own OS and cell phone.
Now, that being said, I firmly believe that Google is doing the right thing and wish that more companies would actually put morality before finance. The Internet is intended to be a place where censorship is at a minimum. By its very design alone, it was built with anonymity in mind. Of course, that won't work with all countries and with all governments. However, as Google is showing, companies do not need to support those countries and governments.
Is this the beginning of a new era? Doubtful. To be 100% honest, if hackers had not infiltrated Google's services, they most likely would not be pulling out of China. That being said, the fact that they are showing the world that they are no longer willing to support the oppression and censorship going on in China speaks volumes about the company.
Without a doubt, Google is the biggest name in Internet searching. It has grown to become synonymous with searching. You no longer look it up online, you Google it. The big question is will Google doing the right thing hurt the company in the long-run. Any good business professional will say, if there is money to be made, a company would be a fool to ignore that on sheer principle. However that is what Google is doing and it will be interesting to see the long term repercussions of that.
Agree with you the long-term effects of Google potentially dropping China could be much bigger than just the search. Especially considering how closely linked several of their other services are. Wrote a blog post about that the other day:
ReplyDeletehttp://tongstromberg.com/2010/01/14/market-reaction-google-china/
As for the morality aspect, it will be interesting to see how Google will handle the other countries they censor today:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0208/outfront-technology-china-where-google-still-censors.htm
Another interesting aspect of the hacking attack which could cast a different light upon this:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=3007&tag=nl.e036