Google Case

Google Case in China 

“When the human rights come first”-analysis Watch this it should be enough :  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGJoaHr2QdM . This is one among hundreds of thousands that are banned from being viewed by public in China.

1 – History and current goals: Google is now the most dominant search tool on the web, setting the standards that others try to follow and better, as yet unsuccessfully. It was founded in 1998 - relatively late compared to many of the popular search engines - by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were graduate students from Stanford University.

Page and Brin were working together on search engine they called "BackRub" in 1996 , they received a considerable help from Yahoo co-founder David filo and they started looking for outside investors to help them improving their project. They established Google, Inc. on 1998. By the way their initial steps in business started in their friend’s garage.

Co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin created Google's core PageRank technology to archive and organize Internet webpages and develop a searchable database. The basic tenet of PageRank is that when one website links to another, the first website is endorsing the second. Pages are then "ranked" according to the ecosystem of all web pages archived by Google. While the company has since utilized numerous other ranking systems, PageRank still remains a central technology. Google also creates search products for photos, videos, and specific websites types such as blogs. Google does not charge consumers for its search capabilities, receiving most of its revenue from advertising and a small portion from licensing its search technologies to enterprise companies.

Press coverage , awards and praises were being given to this growing business , it quickly gained good reputation by its speed , effectiveness , reliability , all that has contributed to spread the usage enormously .  In 2000 they replaced their yahoo provider and since then they started doing much better, furthermore, they became providers search data to all other parties and competitors in the industry.

 2 – Assessment of environmental changes, opportunities, threats, and constraints: 

The internet market has been growing rapidly, the flow of information has become unimaginable than ever before, it was very quick when the whole world became a small village in the internet era. Under these circumstances all internet search websites founders were under a lot of pressure to come up with a strategy that could work and adapt the growing opportunities, threats, and barriers that they could face in their race to benefit from all the resulted opportunities.   

In Google case, the company has been growing, its image was very good in all social aspects as it adopted DON’T BE EVIL principle, the company was trying to maintain this strategy to better serve and meet its users and customers’ needs and expectations, to keep the free flow of information, to keep its customers privacy protected. At the time, business environment is constantly changing and there always could be something that undesired comes up and represent a barrier and a challenge for the company whether to adapt and compromise or just avoid and maintain the main principle.

In 2005, “don’t be evil”, faced the challenge when department of justice requested all major search providers to submit users information in an effort to investigate child pornography cases.

Whereas Google decided to fight against the request and not to give any information that was requested, all other competitors preferred to quickly comply with the government request. Such a decision was made and acted based on Google’s main and ethical principles and values. At that time they didn’t know that they are going to do so in the near future when they decided to enter the Chinese market.   At that time the decision was based on the main strategy.

3 – Critical variables:  growing market opportunity which is the Chinese market, desired global position especially in the Asian countries which are growing and emerging economies and the near future of internet usage was expected to grow enormously, competitors advanced steps had already been in place when Google was planning to enter the game.

In this case, Google’s strategy and principles, and its values that they gave in all their public statement, all were the same, in my opinion; they should change a little in their strategy when they decided to go globally and when they set new goals to be achieved. whenever you have goals added this means you need means and tools to get these goals achieved ,where are you going to get these means and tools from is the first question you are to ask when reviewing the strategy after adding these goals : the answer indeed , is from the external and internal environment . In Google case in china the external environment is all parties that could be interested in the service or have a claim on it whatever is the extent to which they are interested. Linking those goals to the strategy that Google had before was significant to better determine the way they should have gone through.

Another variable was playing a role that the critics that Google had to deal with, given the fact of the Chines government bad record with regard to the human rights and freedom, Google also, had to deal with pressure from major political figures in the United States who’s known by opposing any investment in such dictatorships arena.

However, given the fact  that in business everyone is looking for the money , especially after the most recent crisis , meantime everyone should maintain at least a minimal level of applicable principles and ethics that should be properly , conveniently , profitably , linked to the company’s strategy in order to have clear vision in case of “what- if” scenario .

They used benefit vs. cost analysis and justification defending the decision to enter the Chinese market which has successfully contributed to the overall performance of the company.

  I would say that they would have more than one plan when deciding to enter a market in which they have to obey the state rulers and comply with local business regulations. it is very true that this is a pretty much good decision but at the time, as Google is trying to be successful at all levels they could better create more communications channels with the Chinese government to enhance and create a common ground on which they could base their win-win situation and more importantly could contribute into reaching agreement for any exist or emerge variances. 

Minimize the damage is another policy could have been adopted , meaning try to force the Chinese government as much as possible to give up some restrictions on the freedom of information using anything at Google’s disposal to get this done .

They would also work on improving an innovative tools that could be passed to their consumers in China that enable the Chinese users from getting access to whatever they want without the government being able to determine and identify the user (technical solution).

And finally, I would say not to withdraw from the Chinese market. Google’s rivals have already entered the market even before Google decided to enter that market. In terms of business, to survive in this world you need to be aggressive and make tough decisions sometimes when you have to. And in this case I think it was Must-Decision as everyone else did the same.

The Business – Ethics, Social responsibility, and all other related topics have been arising as major topics as the aftermath of the financial crisis was major concerns for everyone , we all, are watching the dilemma is being discussed at all levels , however, those who defend and I myself think that be in china as a decision has been made was right as everyone else did , this is said in terms of business , and in terms of social responsibility , being there is better than not being there as the people of china would at least benefit from Google in other fields .

Therefore, Google should work hard to keep all the channels open toward each side, Chinese government, and the public everywhere especially those who are concerned such as the users in china and the followers and supporters of Google there and everywhere. This would help Google regain the good image socially in additions to its financial gains. It could also do more in the sake for people as social responsibility; I mean social initiatives that could be for building schools or hospitals and so on.