Google's Dillema in China

Google’s Dilemma in China
Jason Ruby
American Military University
















Google has been the world’s largest and most recognizable search engine for a number of years, eclipsing its competitors like Yahoo and buying up rivals like YouTube. It has opened offices all over the world, including Mexico City, London, Dublin, Tokyo, and Sydney. In September of 2005, Google opened a new Research and Development Center, and in January 2006 “Google.cn, a local domain version of Google, goes live in China” (Google.com, 2010). In July of 2010, China renewed Google’s license to operate in China, but this comes after several disagreements and controversies over efforts by the Chinese government to censor sites, spy on international companies and even its own citizens.
Google was founded in 1998 by Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, after several years of development and testing on the Stanford campus. In that year an angel investor and “Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn't exist yet: a company called Google Inc.” (Google.com, 2010). In September of 1998, Page and Brin file for incorporate in California and begin official operations. Over the next 2 years, Google continued to grow while receiving notoriety from popular technical publications like PC Magazine. By the end of 1999, Google had grown to 40 employees, including Sales and Marketing personnel” (Google.com, 2010).
In the year 2000, Google began to prepare for its expansion into the global marketplace by introducing 10 new language versions of its website. These languages were French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish, clearly targeting the European market. In a press release dated May 9th, 2000, and with the headline “Company Launches First Step in Aggressive Global Expansion”, Google made its international aspirations clear. In this release, co-founder Sergey Brin commented that "Google plans to quickly expand into a wide variety of new international markets. The simplicity of our user interface and the scalability of our back-end systems enables us to expand very quickly" (Google.com, 2000)
Six months later, Google continued laying the groundwork for global expansion by releasing their website in 3 Asian languages, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. In a press release dated September 12, 2000, Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page commented “With more than a billion searchable web pages, including almost 75 million in Asian language content, we anticipate this new technology will become widely used throughout the world" (Google.com, 2000). This announcement comes just a few weeks after China's leading internet technology company, NetEase, “selected Google as its premier Chinese language-specific search engine and default web search results provider” (Google, 2000)
As Google entered these new Asian-Pacific markets, they were faced with heightened levels of government-sponsored censorship which they had previously not experienced in European markets. This government-sponsored censorship is known officially in China as “The Golden Shield Project”, or more informally as “The Great Firewall of China”, is a “system set up by the government of China to limit the access of the Internet in the entire country of China. Not only does the Golden Shield Project act as a censor but it also monitors all online activity in and out of China” (AssociatedContent.com, 2008). This nation-wide censorship of millions of Chinese Internet users would create a serious dilemma for Google, as well as public-relations controversy.
The Golden Shield Project in China began in 1994 as part of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s centralized National Crime Information Center, which would ultimately be used to monitor all of the information generated by Golden Shield. This program was advocated and supported at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party, as it became clear that the freedom and anonymity facilitated by the Internet was a threat to Communist control. In April of 1998, Luo Gan, the Secretary of the Central Political Science and Law Committee, stated that “Overall, there must be a consideration; the ultimate goal is to achieve a national network” (AssociatedContent.com, 2008).
Between 1998 and 2001, extensive discussions and deliberations were held by various Ministries and sub-ministries within the Communist nation’s political hierarchy, including the Ministry of Public Security, the State Planning Commission, and the Golden Shield Project Leading Group Office. Officially referred to as a “construction project”, Golden Shield was approved and sanctioned by the State Council of the Chinese Communist party in April of 2001 and fully implemented in 2005. China’s efforts to suppress sites that were considered to be subversive and to track an individual’s activities online were now had the full backing and resources of the Chinese government.
During this period when The Golden Shield Project was being developed and implemented in China, Google continued its ventures into international markets. In August 2001, Google opened its first international market in Tokyo, and later that year announced an agreement to become the search provider for the biggest Internet Service Provider in Latin America, Universo Online. A press release from Google dated October 1st, 2001, stated that “With 7.5 billion page views during in the second quarter of 2001, and 16.8 million exclusive visitors in June, UOL Inc. has consolidated during its position as the largest Internet company in, Latin America” (Google, 2001).
In 2005, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, formally a vice president at Microsoft and founder of their research lab in China, began work at Google’s new Research and Development Center in Beijing. A lawsuit was immediately filed by Microsoft, citing that by ‘by joining a rival, Lee was violating a noncompete agreement he had signed” (SFGate.com). This legal disputed continued for nearly 6 months before Microsoft and Google came to an undisclosed agreement which allowed Kai-Fu Lee to continue his work at Google’s Research and Development Center in China.
Google’s impact in China was not felt right away, however. Baidu is an organic Chinese search engine that increased in popularity between 2003 and 2004, holding roughly 35 percent of the market share by Google’s entrance into the market in 2005. Google’s “market share was about 23 percent, lower than Baidu's 37 percent, but still it was well ahead of the other local competition” (AsiaSentinel.com, 2010). Currently Baidu is the leading search provider in China and is number 6 on Alexa’s Top 500 Global Sites (ReadWriteWeb.com).
Google executives recognized the importance Internet cafés in the Chinese market, and aggressively targeted these locations. In contrast to the US where most people have home Internet access, in China “42.4% of the country's 298 million Internet users go online in the cafes” (AsiaTimes.com, 2009). The café owners were encouraged to make Google.cn their primary search provider, and Dr. Lee “arranged for Google headquarters staff to visit Internet cafes, so they would appreciate how important these were as the point of first contact with search engines for many young Internet users in China” (AsiaTimes.com).
In January of 2006, Google officially launched its search engine for Chinese users, Google.cn. This new site, as part of Google’s license to operate on in China, was subject to censorship by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. Searches that are censored on Google.cn include “independence for Taiwan and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, as well as human rights and democracy in China generally” (BBC.com, 2006). Searches for these banned keywords, and others like ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’, and ‘free Tibet’, direct users to sites that condemn these ideas and topics.
Google experienced a considerable backlash for what many believed was their support of and collaboration with government-sponsored repression of millions of Chinese citizens. It seemed that Google’s actions were clearly not aligned with their mission statement “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful” (Google.com, 2010). Protests were held outside of Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, and company executives were called to hearings before the U.S. House International Relations subcommittee in which Representative Tom Lantos stated “your abhorrent actions in China are a disgrace" (TheWeek.com, 2010).
Google executives responded to public criticism in various press releases, interviews, and media events. At a news conference held shortly after the launch of Google.cn in 2006, then CEO Eric Schmidt defended Google’s decision to censor its search results in China, expressing his company’s opinion that it would be better to accept the laws in China in order to serve its millions of Internet users would be better than boycotting then all together. He went on to say that “it's arrogant for us to walk into a country where we are just beginning to operate and tell that country how to operate” (Wired.com, 2006).
As controversy continued to follow Google.cn into 2007, as well as other companies like Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay that operated under strict censorship laws, Many market analysts believed that Google’s acquisition of YouTube.com would help them to gain some of the market share from its main rival Baidu, as video streaming is one if its most popular features. Google then purchased the leading Chinese video and music downloading site, Xunlei.com, shortly afterward. However, Google’s market share in China declined from 23% to 19% by October of 2007, while Baidu saw its market share increase from 37% to 63% (NYTimes.com, 2007).
Throughout 2008 and 2009, friction frequently mounted between Google and the Chinese government over content made available on YouTube.com and Google.cn. In March of 2009, YouTube.com was blocked for four days by the Golden Shield Project. The official reason given by the Chinese government was that a video appeared on YouTube.com showing the beating of Tibetan protestors by police. China’s official news agency, Xinhua, reported that “supporters of the Dalai Lama had fabricated a video that appeared to show Chinese police officers brutally beating Tibetans” (NYTimes.com, 2009). This type of censorship has also reported in other countries, as Thailand, Turkey, and Pakistan have all blocked YouTube.com for similar reasons.
Despite contention with the Chinese government over its online content, Google had gained additional market share by October of 2009. The Chinese market research firm Analysys International reported that Google had attained 29.1% of the market share, with Baidu claiming 61.6% and Yahoo with 5.6% (ChinaTechNews.com). Google’s increased focus on video and music streaming, as well as ecommerce and mobile Internet technologies have resulted in renewed momentum for Google, though Baidu continues to hold a clear advantage.
In January of 2010, Google announced that it had been the victim on “a "highly sophisticated and targeted" cyber-attack originating in China, designed to access the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists” (TheWeek.com, 2010). Google as stated that not only had the Google accounts of Chinese activists been compromised, but accounts of U.S. citizens and those of some European countries had been as well. All of these targeted persons had been involved advocating Chinese human rights groups or activities. Google emphasized that only two Gmail accounts had actually been accessed, while the rest were limited to account information.
These target cyber-attacks on Google users, widely suspected of being government-sponsored, prompted Google to re-assess its policies and commitments in China. Shortly after Google announced the attack, CEO Eric Schmidt publicly stated that Google would no longer censor its results on Google.cn, even at the cost of shutting down operations in China completely. Google did not follow through, however, and negotiations between Google and the Chinese government continued for several months. Meanwhile, media reports from both inside China and in international media outlets all pointed to the imminent closing of Google.cn.
In an effort to compromise with the Chinese government and to defuse the tense standoff, all Google.cn traffic is redirected to Google’s Hong Kong site, Google.com.hk beginning in March of 2010. The Chinese government still applies it censorship laws in Hong Kong, monitored by the Golden Shield Project, Google is not legally obligated to censor its search results on its servers based there. Chinese officials called these changes ““unacceptable" and would likely revoke Google's license to operate in country if it continues that practice” (CNN.com, 2010).
In response to China’s unhappiness with the automatic redirection of Google.cn to Google.com.hk, Google changed the redirection to occur only when user’s clicked on the search field of Google.cn. This seemed to placate the Chinese government, which renewed Google’s license to operate in mainland China in July of 2010 for 1 year. Although this new method of redirection allowed Google to stay in the country another year, it is likely to affect its market share as ISPs and Internet cafés are unlikely to choose a default search engine that required 2 mouse clicks to route to a search engine. Most of this business will fall to Chinese Internet giant Baidu.
Google remains the largest and most recognizable search engine throughout the world, offered in many languages and with offices around the globe. With such a global presence that continues to grow at a rapid pace, it is inevitable that Google will have to deal with similar dilemmas and controversies like those in mainland China. The decision that Google is currently struggling with is whether to sacrifice its core values of information access for all to gain entry into new markets. Google is walking a dangerous and difficult line, and one that could lead them to be seen more and more as enablers of state-sponsored repression in countries like China if they are not firm in their resolve.

Religion used as an excuse to hate, again.

One of the most talked about news stories this week as the plan by Reverend Terry Jones to burn not just one, but hundreds of Qu'rans on September 11th. Reverend Jones also used Facebook to encourage like-minded people around the world to do the same. Only today has this plan been called off, after nearly unanimous condemnation from the White House, the State Department, military leaders, and followers of all religions across the globe.

Unfortunately, significant damage has already been done without one book having been burned. This man has drawn the world's attention to his small, Gainsville-based fundamentalist Christian church called the Dove World Outreach Center and its anti-Islamic ideology. Jones has written a book titled "Islam is of the Devil", which is also the message that is prominently displayed on the property of his church. His children, age 10 and 15 years old, have worn t-shirts with this slogan to school. As of Sep 7th, 2010, the Facebook page of his church had nearly 9,000 followers.

Muslims around the world have already voiced their outrage using every medium and outlet available, including violent protests in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia. Just his voiced intention to burn the Qu'ran was enough to inflame already simmering tensions, and Reverend Jones knows this. His intention is not to stand up to radical Islam, as he continually states to the media. What he is trying to do push the Christian and Muslum communities further into violent conflict, and its working.

The the goal of all radical theologies is to enflame existing tensions, or to create those that did not already exist, resulting in a polarized community. Just like in time of war, many individuals will feel the need to take a side and defend what is familiar to them against a perceived threat. If Reverend Terry Jones and the Dove Outreach Center can incite violence against Americans, this just feeds into their underlying message. More people, uneducated, uninformed, and locked into the cycle of fear and consumption, will flood his church with money and other forms of support.
We have seen the same tactic used throughout history as a method of unconventional warfare. The ability to create the threatening situation leads to mistrust and ultimately violence. Ironically, the best example of this is the 9/11 attacks by Al Queda. The main goal of these attacks was to make Americans fear all Muslims, for for us to overeact to this threat. We did exactly that, putting thousands of Muslims on no fly lists, invasions of 2 Muslims countries, rendition, and countless other unnecessary actions that divided Christian and Muslims societies. This was the goal. It was not to kill thousands of people. We played right into their hands, and so is Reverend Terry Jones.