Jake Hushka Post 4- Google Discussion

Discussion Questions

1. The article states that no country has ever before made a better run at climbing every step of economic development at once. Specifically, the number of internet users in China is growing at such an exponential rate that from a business perspective any company should jump at the chance to develop with the country. This growth rate also brings along the opportunity to acquire great amounts of advertising revenues, while providing services needed and wanted by the country.
Pros
-Public Access- in less than a decade Internet users soared to over 103 million
-The opportunity of advertising revenues- 58% of the Chinese public said they use search engines to find information. Google could use this alone to increase revenues.
Cons
-Quality of the product available in China will be lower than the rest of the world do to there censorship.

2. Business ethics provide guidelines for acceptable behavior by organizations in both their strategy formulation and day-to-day operations. Specifically, business ethics can be defined as a system of moral principles applied in the commercial world.
Pros
-The opportunity to provide a nation with a source of information
Cons
-Forced Censorship
------Firewall devices at the border
------Government-mandated self-censorship by Internet service and content providers
------Required self-discipline exercised by individual users
-Use of the Internet to repress dissent
------Chinese Government uses the Internet to collect information about dissidents and to prosecute them
-Government Favored Competition

3. Obviously Google decided to enter the Chinese market, which any intelligently ran company would have decided to do at the time. I do not think that Google would have been able to mitigate the ethical adverse impacts. I think as a company, Google decided that they could increase revenues while at the same time allowing some information to flow across the borders. Google defines itself as “a global technology leader focused on improving the ways people connect with information.” This statement alone could be used as justification to enter the market. Ethically the company believes that they are not breaking any of their standards they have set for themselves, and represented the responsibility they held to shareholders intelligently. Could there be backlash amongst the public? I believe they knew the answer would be yes, but they were still willing to take this risk. Google’s mission statement discussed their responsibility as company was “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” From an ethics standpoint this statement does not state which and what information would be accessible to who, but that their mission to locate information and provide it to users. Unfortunately Google would not be able to avoid the ethical repercussions that come with the Chinese government, which was using the internet to repress dissidents. Once the company entered the Chinese market, they would be legally obligated to comply with the requirements of Chinese law enforcement. I believe the Google knew it had to make a decision one way or the other. The company decided to enter the market, which I believe gave them strength. They acted on an opportunity and stood by the decision for the time being.

4. If I were in charge of Google I would have made the same decision to enter the Chinese market as well. The business possibilities and revenue opportunities that followed the Chinese market were great. The one difference I would have made is limited the exposure of the company. I would have installed the search engine solely and left the other portions of Google’s business model alone. As George stated in his blog, Google recognized they were wrong to have ever expanded into China and they have taken steps “pull out”. The mentioned cyber attacks were the catalyst. These attacks weren’t your garden variety they were attacks against the Internet, finance, technology, and media. Had the company hedged their investment to start off slow within the foreign economy, they may have been able to slow the attacks or possibly prevent them all together. At the time of the case I agree with Google’s decision and would have stood bye them as well.