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"Does anyone today care that Google stood its ground against the Chinese government and squandered the entire country away to competitors?" Yes, me. It's the s

"Does anyone today care that Google stood its ground against the Chinese government and squandered the entire country away to competitors?" Yes, me. It's the single factual act of Google's history that sticks in my mind. It says to me someone near the top will lose revenue to make an ethical stand. I can't remember too many other concrete examples of this in large companies.

jonmrodriguez 13y ago
Didn't Facebook do the same?
- andreyf 13y ago
  No.
- mtgx 13y ago
  Facebook strikes you as the company that would have principles and morals? The reason they are not in China is because the government wouldn't let them, with or without censorship. They are too much of a "threat to the unity of the society" - you know, the typical authoritarian excuse.
- selmnoo 13y ago
  Oh, you have no idea how badly Zuckerburg wants to be successful in China. Zuck has been learning Mandarin for a long time, I really think a primary motivation for that has to do with plans of really getting going in China. When he visited China in 2010, the first two places he went to were Baidu's and Alibaba's offices. There was supposedly a partnership in the works but much to Zuck's chagrin it ended up never materializing. The company has been trying on and on again to get into China somehow, Sandberg has been on the record saying "China's the big one" (she talked a lot about it in the Charlie Rose interview from some time back), Zuck himself I think was scheduled to give China another visit but those plans were presumably scrapped in the post-NSA-leaks environment. Now more than ever, it is clear that no American social networking media company will ever have substantial market share in China. The Chinese government will never let it fly, it's as simple as that.
  - tokenadult 13y ago
    Now more than ever, it is clear that no American social networking media company will ever have substantial market share in China. The Chinese government will never let it fly, it's as simple as that. A free market in Internet companies in China is not possible until regime change in China. I think a change in government in China to a post-communist system is moderately possible, although various geopolitical trade-offs have caused this to take longer in China than it did in most parts of eastern Europe. The bubble economy in China makes it likely that there will be internal pressure there for regime change when the bubble pops.
    - w1ntermute 13y ago
      > I think a change in government in China to a post-communist system is moderately possible Transitions in other Asian countries from authoritarian (which is what China is right now) to democratic governments typically coincided with the populace reaching a certain level of wealth and education. I don't see that level being reached in China any time soon because the sort of accelerated export-oriented growth that worked in other Asian countries won't work when you have more than a billion people. China is still very far from the levels of wealth and prosperity in Korea or Taiwan when they transitioned to democracy.
  - w1ntermute 13y ago
    > Zuck has been learning Mandarin for a long time, I really think a primary motivation for that has to do with plans of really getting going in China. I'm pretty sure the main reason is that his wife is ethnically Chinese. For business purposes, a translator is more than sufficient. And from what I remember, he gave this up after a year of private tutoring because he wasn't getting anywhere - you really have to make a big time commitment to learn a language like Chinese.
chrischen 13y ago
Google didn't stand its ground. Google also did a cost-benefit analysis and realized that China wasn't going to let a foreign company control its internet and monitor its data, which in turn was monitored by the US government. Further cost-benefit analysis by Google determined that it was more beneficial to tell everyone it was for principles.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  Yes, quite possibly the truth. I'd have said so myself, except I've been moderating my Google conspiracy theories to some extent in HN comments.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- turing 13y ago
  That may very well be true, but stating it as fact just decreases your credibility.
  - gibwell 13y ago
    No more than those who starte as fact that Google acted out of higher morality.
  - chrischen 13y ago
    This is what Google employees from China have told me. I'm stating it as fact because from my perspective, with the information I have, it has appeared as almost fact to me.
r0h1n 13y ago
FWIW, so did I in 2010. But what benefit - strategic or tactical - does that hold for Google today? Ask most people today if Google "does no evil", and you'll get a sense of what happened to that moral halo. In the same vein, can the moral gains for Bloomberg from running these two stories outweigh the monetary/reporting freedom losses that will come too?
- jnbiche 13y ago
  Well, just like in the case of human beings, companies have to continue to not screw people over to be viewed of as moral and/or ethical. Just like we have to not steal, harm, enslave, etc. each single day to be considered ethical people. Maybe someone can get away with not doing the right thing once or twice and still be viewed as an overall ethical person, but just because they do the right thing once or twice does not earn them that honor.
jonnathanson 13y ago
That's the cover story, yes. The whole truth is a little more nuanced. Google abandoned China because the Chinese government was hacking and stealing its technology, rerouting its traffic to homegrown and government-subsidized competitors like Baidu, and generally making the value of the market not worth the hassle. Google wanted to do business in China, but basically it couldn't. The government's demands to censor and monitor search results were just icing on a tall, thick cake. To whatever extent Google based its decision to cede the Chinese market on ethical principles, that's wonderful and to be commended. But ethics probably had 10% to do with it. Principal always drives principle.

jonmrodriguez 13y ago

Didn't Facebook do the same?

andreyf 13y ago
No.
mtgx 13y ago
Facebook strikes you as the company that would have principles and morals? The reason they are not in China is because the government wouldn't let them, with or without censorship. They are too much of a "threat to the unity of the society" - you know, the typical authoritarian excuse.
selmnoo 13y ago
Oh, you have no idea how badly Zuckerburg wants to be successful in China. Zuck has been learning Mandarin for a long time, I really think a primary motivation for that has to do with plans of really getting going in China. When he visited China in 2010, the first two places he went to were Baidu's and Alibaba's offices. There was supposedly a partnership in the works but much to Zuck's chagrin it ended up never materializing. The company has been trying on and on again to get into China somehow, Sandberg has been on the record saying "China's the big one" (she talked a lot about it in the Charlie Rose interview from some time back), Zuck himself I think was scheduled to give China another visit but those plans were presumably scrapped in the post-NSA-leaks environment. Now more than ever, it is clear that no American social networking media company will ever have substantial market share in China. The Chinese government will never let it fly, it's as simple as that.
- tokenadult 13y ago
  Now more than ever, it is clear that no American social networking media company will ever have substantial market share in China. The Chinese government will never let it fly, it's as simple as that. A free market in Internet companies in China is not possible until regime change in China. I think a change in government in China to a post-communist system is moderately possible, although various geopolitical trade-offs have caused this to take longer in China than it did in most parts of eastern Europe. The bubble economy in China makes it likely that there will be internal pressure there for regime change when the bubble pops.
  - w1ntermute 13y ago
    > I think a change in government in China to a post-communist system is moderately possible Transitions in other Asian countries from authoritarian (which is what China is right now) to democratic governments typically coincided with the populace reaching a certain level of wealth and education. I don't see that level being reached in China any time soon because the sort of accelerated export-oriented growth that worked in other Asian countries won't work when you have more than a billion people. China is still very far from the levels of wealth and prosperity in Korea or Taiwan when they transitioned to democracy.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  > Zuck has been learning Mandarin for a long time, I really think a primary motivation for that has to do with plans of really getting going in China. I'm pretty sure the main reason is that his wife is ethnically Chinese. For business purposes, a translator is more than sufficient. And from what I remember, he gave this up after a year of private tutoring because he wasn't getting anywhere - you really have to make a big time commitment to learn a language like Chinese.

chrischen 13y ago

Google didn't stand its ground. Google also did a cost-benefit analysis and realized that China wasn't going to let a foreign company control its internet and monitor its data, which in turn was monitored by the US government. Further cost-benefit analysis by Google determined that it was more beneficial to tell everyone it was for principles.

r0h1n 13y ago
Yes, quite possibly the truth. I'd have said so myself, except I've been moderating my Google conspiracy theories to some extent in HN comments.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
turing 13y ago
That may very well be true, but stating it as fact just decreases your credibility.
- gibwell 13y ago
  No more than those who starte as fact that Google acted out of higher morality.
- chrischen 13y ago
  This is what Google employees from China have told me. I'm stating it as fact because from my perspective, with the information I have, it has appeared as almost fact to me.

r0h1n 13y ago

FWIW, so did I in 2010. But what benefit - strategic or tactical - does that hold for Google today? Ask most people today if Google "does no evil", and you'll get a sense of what happened to that moral halo. In the same vein, can the moral gains for Bloomberg from running these two stories outweigh the monetary/reporting freedom losses that will come too?

jnbiche 13y ago
Well, just like in the case of human beings, companies have to continue to not screw people over to be viewed of as moral and/or ethical. Just like we have to not steal, harm, enslave, etc. each single day to be considered ethical people. Maybe someone can get away with not doing the right thing once or twice and still be viewed as an overall ethical person, but just because they do the right thing once or twice does not earn them that honor.

jonnathanson 13y ago

That's the cover story, yes. The whole truth is a little more nuanced. Google abandoned China because the Chinese government was hacking and stealing its technology, rerouting its traffic to homegrown and government-subsidized competitors like Baidu, and generally making the value of the market not worth the hassle. Google wanted to do business in China, but basically it couldn't. The government's demands to censor and monitor search results were just icing on a tall, thick cake. To whatever extent Google based its decision to cede the Chinese market on ethical principles, that's wonderful and to be commended. But ethics probably had 10% to do with it. Principal always drives principle.