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p2pnet news view Politics | Advertising:- What’s really interesting about the Google vs China thing is not that it’s happening, it’s that anyone gives a damn, least of all China.

Google is, after all, a huge American corporation that exists to make profits for its shareholders — nothing more — and anything and everything it does is subservient to that.

Is its supposed ‘outrage’ at China’s cyber attack against it merely empty posturing — an excuse for its failure to become a dominant commercial and political force in China as it’s become in the US?

Stamping its feet and thumping its chest

Google presents itself as a search engine company. It may have started out that way, but in 2010 it’s primarily an advertising gorilla.

Says Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Lab, in Harvard Business >>>

“Google used to be a ‘good beats evil’ business. It profited by doing good, and creating better sets of economics. That was yesterday. Today, increasingly, Google is an ‘evil subsidizes good’ business. It’s not so different from Coke. The historic, globe-spanning bad stuff Coke does — selling toxic sugar-water to kids and the poor — subsidizes a threadbare patch of good stuff: a handful of spare change for charitable giving and public partnerships.

Increasingly, “the evil stuff Google does — supporting censorship, selling more and more toxic ads, squeezing suppliers and turning a blind eye — subsidizes a shrinking green patch of good stuff, like investing in the Mozilla Foundation”, he says.

Google’s security fences

Google is currently stamping its feet and thumping its chest because  China has been targetting Google in cyber attacks.

In retaliation, Google launched a holier-than-thou media campaign painting itself as innocent and hard-done-by.

Yahoo,  whose record in human rights abuses is truly appalling, joined in.

Microsoft, whose Internet Explorer was a primary tool used by Chinese hackers to break down Google’s security fences,  says it’ll keep on doing business in China.

Like, what’s the big deal? – it asks. China does this kind of thing all the time.

If Chinese hackers were able to mount an attack significant enough to provoke this kind of reaction from Google, and using common-garden technology to do so, what does that say about the safety of G-Mail accounts, and so on?

Finding a way out …

“Google is not the first or only one Western Internet firm that fared miserably in China’s Internet market,” China Daily quotes ‘Gaoren’ as saying on cnhubei.com based, going on “The online auction and shopping website E-bay’s defeat against the domestic Taobao.com, Alibaba’s acquisition of Yahoo China, and QQ.com’s dominance in China’s instant messaging market, to name just a few, seem to have already foretold Google.cn’s fate.”

Google’s reasons for abandoning its own shabby censorship practices in China are just its “ingenious excuse to flee the Chinese market in which they failed their investors and shareholders,” says the post.

“For one thing, Google entered the China market after censorship was instituted, not vice versa,” it says. “If anything, China has been loosing its censorship since Google’s entry. The best proof is perhaps the free debate over the installation of the filtering software Green Dam, in which the Chinese government finally budged.”

China Daily continues, “Many claim, most likely with ulterior motives, that the shutdown of Google.cn will leave Chinese netizens isolated from the outside world. That is, simply, untrue. The closure of Google.cn has little, if any, effect on the Chinese users, as Google.com, its global website, is the primary channel they access to search for information. Unfortunately, Google didn’t even bother to explain that.

“Google’s motivation was clear and simple,” it says, adding “When the company cannot attain the goal and pocket enough money and hopes to find a way out, the Chinese government and its censorship, which the West frequently picks up, just become two convenient scapegoats.”

‘ … one can’t help but admire Google’

China state news agency Xinhua says it’s “Inappropriate to play up Google China’s withdrawal threat”. But at 6:50 AM Pacific, the story detailing the reasons why had been deleted not only from the main site, but elsewhere.

Xinhua does, however, quote the item cited above.

China Daily also carries a post by Jeff Pan (right), an MBA student at Duke University in the US.

One “can’t help but admire Google for choosing the noble ideological values over commercial interests in a hopelessly materialistic world,” says Pan, going on >>>

Simply put, Google believes it can force the Chinese government to meet its market demands if it threats to pull out. To ensure this to happen, the company employs a wide array of tactics to make it painful for the Chinese government to fight. Here are some of the things they did:

Conspiracy theory. There is one thing that can cause a lot of damage to China: a reputation that China is a hostile and dangerous business environment. Google fancies a stereotypical Hollywood story to prove this point, but a rather boring story indeed.

The human rights card. There are two favorite weapons for the western media and politicians to use to attack China: human rights and freedom of speech. Not surprisingly, Google manages to incorporate both in its statement and has so far successfully garnered a lot of support. Read this Op-Ed from New York Times titled ‘Google takes a stand.’ But you don’t have to click the link to know what picture is drawn: upright small guy against big evil monster.

‘We are not alone.’ Google also mentioned in its statement a lot of other large companies were in the same boat with them, and wanted to send a signal to the Chinese government: you might face more enemies than you thought if you choose to fight. Of course, Google didn’t forget to mention that it is ‘also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.’

Anyways, it might be still true that Google is doing all these simply because its China operations are against the company values, but I am not convinced. To avoid cyber attack? Come on, I just don’t think Google is that fragile. To protect human rights and freedom of speech in China? Really, then how is pulling out helping China to improve its freedom of speech?

Adds Pan, “In 2006, Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, was quoted saying, ‘We will take a long-term view to win in China. The Chinese have 5,000 years of history. Google has 5,000 years of patience in China.’  Well, the patience has lasted for three years so far.

“It’s going to be interesting to see what will happen in the next 4,997 years.”

Meanwhile, “Today, Google is operating its business as usual in China and is still censoring search results on Google.cn, a spokeswoman, who declined to be identified, said,” states Bloomberg News, adding:

“Its employees in China are still going to work, she said.”

And, “So far, the MOC (Ministry of Commerce ) and Beijing Municipal Commission of Commerce have received no reports that Google would withdraw investment from China, or withdraw from the Chinese market,” says China Daily.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

profits for its shareholders – Google – the Bad, the Ugly and Coke,  December 12, 2009
Harvard Business – How Vevo Makes Google More Like Coca-Cola, December 11, 2009
primary tool – Internet Explorer ‘vector’ in Google China attacks, January 15, 2010
China Daily – No report from Google yet: Ministry of Commerce, January 15, 2010
China Daily – What’s Google’s game plan?, January 15, 2010
China Daily – Google is simply not successful in China, January 15, 2010
Bloomberg News - Google Denies Media Reports on Closure of China Site, Office, January 16, 2010

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