Category: So Google have decided to take on China, eh?
Larry and Sergey have apparently decided to take the Party handbook on good PR and government relations, tear pages off and use them as toilet paper.
A few days ago, the Chinese government allegedly hacked into the Gmail accounts of local human rights activists in an attempt to access some rather sensitive information. Doing a U-turn on their previous cooperative policies, Google turned off their search censorship bots and posted what was basically a “F*ck You, China!” post on their official blog.
Now the fight is on, and a number of Chinese citizens (knowing something that the rest of the world doesn’t) have already started marking Google’s gravesite.
Ok, so now the big question that every cynical MBA wants to ask is: is Google really doing this as a matter of good corporate governance, or, seeing as they’re already losing market share, is this really all about money?
I’m not going to answer that – rather, I’m putting up this blog post to say, and this is in a very nice way, “Tough Sh*t, Google.”
There are more internet users in China than there are people in the US, and as long as the Party is here, online content on the Mainland will follow what the Party wants. The big dogs at the Googleplex would know this, but what a lot of regular folk don’t know is that these 370million surfers inhabit a familiar, but oddly alien, parallel online universe.
Have you heard of Tencent’s QQ? What about Taobao? Youku? Not either? How ‘bout Baidu? Well, I’m not surprised. These are all locally developed sites that have taken over virtual turf which was either under- or improperly-developed by foreign firms.
- QQ is the annoyingly popular instant messenger of choice for the Mainland’s office xiaojies who either chat away the work day, or play online farming games.
- Taobao is the local version of Ebay; it offers a wider range of knickknacks at lower prices, and in fact cheapo China-based Ebayers buy their stuff from Taobao to sell overseas.
- Youku is my favorite Chinese website, by far – it’s one part Youtube, one part Hulu, and it’s got “IPR legal issues” and “copyright infringement” stamped all over it.
- Baidu is the country’s top search engine, providing more locally relevant results and more pirated MP3s than anyone else in the market.
Google’s not even making proper coin on their ads here. And like I said, they’re already losing market share to Baidu. Should Google decide to just back out of the country, no doubt it’s going to be quite a big loss for the online community… for about 2 seconds.
Owing to an initial lack of local market appreciation/understanding, foreign internet firms have almost never been successful here. In fact, I can’t think of any foreign company that’s opened a .CN and been successful. If Google moves out, someone else is going to move in almost immediately. And, mark my words; it’s going to be ex-Google employees at the forefront.
Now, money aside, what does Google aim to do exactly? Are they simply trying to buy some goodwill with Transparency and Amnesty International? Or, are they trying to prove something to their stockholders? “Despite what a number of US bloggers would have you believe, we really are not all that evil.”
I don’t get it, really.
Just check the by-laws, employee handbooks and press releases of ANY international company that’s got an office in China and you’ll find that “cooperation and commitment to China and the laws set by the Chinese government” appears on every other page. Players that actually bring real products and real value to the economy like Rio Tinto, and Coca Cola – both of which recently jumped through a few legal hoops – will bend to the Party-line in return for even just a small slice of this rather big pie.
What do you think is going to happen when a company such as Google – which doesn’t provide any tangible product, and whose whole service and value proposition can easily be re-produced by their ex-employees – decides to just pack up and leave? It’s not like intellectual property is all the rage here.
And besides, Twitter, the BBC, Youtube and Facebook have all been blocked, and yet the online community is still standing.
I honestly feel that Google is just digging a big hole for itself. Their previous actions have shown that they are willing to bend their own rules, and that they just might be evil. They originally gave search-censorship concessions to the Chinese Government in return for their own slice of the pie. In fact, they’ve also given concessions to Brazil (to hunt pedophiles), the US (on numerous occasions) and several other countries.
If the main issue here is not being evil, then wouldn’t it be fair to say that the Chinese government was in fact being good? If Brazilians and the Yanks can get information to maintain public safety, why not the Chinese? Also, who’s the say that the Iranians and the Russians aren’t doing the same thing trying to hack into people’s Gmail accounts? Why isn’t there such a big ruckus there?
The Chinese are only trying to keep civil order within their own borders. It’s not like they spent 15% of their GDP to ship out over 100,000 troops and invade North Korea in hopes of finding WMDs, killing thousands of innocents in the process. But then didn’t find WMDs yet just stayed on over for the last 7 years, anyway.
Now that’s something to ponder. Does Google really want to make a point and extend their own set of mores over an entire country just to underline their unofficial motto? They must be gambling on something bigger. They might think that the Chinese government will cave and let Google operate, hands off. Maybe they just want to prove to themselves and to everyone else that at least one big American multinational still has Heart, and that they won’t kowtow to a formerly impoverished authoritarian regime that’s gotten arrogant and power-drunk with the fact that nobody in their right mind would say “No” to 1,500,000,000 customers.
In the end, well, I’m just some student. Larry and Sergey both have enough money to buy my soul 6 times over.
Now, it might not be the perfect analogy, but the thing is, the last time a foreign private corporation went against China, well… we had the Opium Wars.
So, as I said earlier – TOUGH SH*T.
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