Google China - Ethical Perspective

Business perspective:

For: Before launching Google.cn, Google was a key player in Chinese internet market. The article presented that Google has offered a Chinese-language version search engine since 2000; however, the location of server caused the service unreliable for Chinese users. Thus, the market share of Chinese internet declined rapidly. How to prevent the decrease of market share is an important topic for management team of Google to consider, probably physically enter Chinese market can expand the popularity and prosper of Google.

Moreover, according to the article, there were at least 102 million Internet users in China by July of 2005, this number ranked second amongst the whole international internet market and occupied 11% of internet users all over the world. The data presented that there commercial potential in Chinese Internet market was huge and rapidly growing, this could be a critical factor attract Google to enter China.

Against: The article said that 38% users went online for entertainment, such as download music and movies; however, Google didn't offer these kinds of service. Therefore, Google probably could not attract advertisers and benefited from their services. Besides, the competition in China is really intensely, there were several major internet portals, such as Baidu, Yahoo, etc. Based on the above considerations, entering the market for internet search in China faced high risk for Google.

Ethical perspective:

For: The mission of Google is providing information to anyone who needs it and satisfying its users with universal access to information. Because of the search engine was hosted on server which located outside of China, that caused unfriendly user experience, and in turn Google failed to provide reliable access to information for Chinese users. Besides, failing to offer service to Chinese which occupies the fifth of the world's population is really hurt. Taking into account the above factors, Google should enter China internet market.

Against: Although Google struggled to offer universal information for Chinese users, due to the censorship of government, some kinds of sensitive information have been blocked by "the Great Firewall of China" censorship system. And there seems to be no shirking for Google to provide any information needed by government, which severely