Business

GOOGLE VS. CHINA

Ever since Google began a Chinese version of its website in 2006, the company has been beset with ethical dilemmas. Chinese law required that Google self-censor its search results against subjects considered to be pornographic or subversive, such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Critics felt Google’s collusion with Chinese censors betrayed the company’s famous “Don’t Be Evil” slogan, but for Google, the world’s largest market of Internet users was too big to pass up. Then on January 12, 2010, Google discovered that it and 20 other U.S. companies had been attacked by computer hacks originating in China. Google even found that the hackers attempted to break into the Gmail accounts of prominent human rights activists working in China, leading some to speculate that the Chinese government played a role in the attacks.

News of the espionage outraged Google, which vowed to take action against the Chinese government. Retaliation arrived the following March when the company shut down Google.cn, redirecting users to its uncensored Hong Kong site. Chinese officials immediately denounced the attack, accusing Google of sparking an “Internet war” and working with the U.S. government to hamstring Chinese innovation. Google’s chief legal officer, on the other hand, justified the company’s actions as being in accordance with Chinese law and Google policy rather than an act of defiance. Also, in some parts of the country the elimination of Google.cn may just be a symbolic blow to Chinese censorship. Images deemed inappropriate by Chinese authorities are still blocked by government firewalls in parts of Mainland China.

The move damaged Google’s non-search-related endeavors in China as well. The day after Google.cn went down, China Mobile, the country’s largest telecommunications company, dropped Google as the default search engine on its new line of smartphones. The nation’s second-largest mobile company, China Unicom, also halted production on a...