Case Analysis - Google in China

344 Words2 Pages
A. Introduction of Google in China Google Inc, one of the biggest searching engines in the world, was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in1998 and its primary mission statement is to organize the world& s information and make it universally accessible and useful. “Don’t be evil” has been the Google’s unofficial slogan (Google). However, it seems their high moral slogan has been criticized after they launched China-based google.cn search page which has censorship controlled by the Chinese government since January of 2006. Because of the censored search results in China, the Chinese users are not able to reach some political sensitive topics, such as democratic reform, Taiwanese independence, any Taiwanese website, the Falun Gong movement, Tibetan independence, the real story regarding Tiananen Square massacre happened in 1989, and many other websites. Google top executive, Andrew McLaughlin, said, “Google.cn will comply with local Chinese laws and regulations…In deciding how best to approach the Chinese--or any--market, we must balance our commitments to satisfy the interest of users, expand access to information, and respond to local conditions” (Mills, 2006). However, human rights activists quickly protested and argued that Google was doing something against its mission statement: access to all information, mentioned previously, because the Chinese users can only access the certain numbers of information at google.cn, but not all. In January of 2010, Google announced that it was no longer willing to censor search in China because the Gmail accounts of some Chinese human rights activists were hacked. Chinese government authorities condemned the decision by Google to lift censorship, which was breaking a promise between China and Google (China condemns decision by Google to lift censorship). On March 23, 2010, Google redirected all searching from google.cn to

More about Case Analysis - Google in China

Open Document