Final Project

Who's Evil?


Ziyi Feng
Engl191
Roland Specht-Jarvis
Final project
05/04/10

Who is Evil?

In the morning of March 23, 2010, the biggest searching engine Google stopped self censoring their searching service on the Google.cn. Chinese users from the mainland would not be able to use the Google Search, Google News and Google Imagines any more. However, Google transferred their service to Hong Kong. On the Google.com.hk, people can get unfiltered information which is in traditional Chinese.

Early in the year, it was said that Google had been attacked by hackers from inside China. The problems exposure from the attack and the restriction on free speech required by the Chinese government, which made Google start to consider if they need to close the Chinese service and the company in China. On January 13, Google posted an article on its official website to say that they will stop filtering the search result in mainland China. This means that Google would not obey the Chinese law anymore. A few days later, Google’s officers changed their mind and denied that they had already stopped all the programs. They wanted to reach the agreement with the Chinese government and then stay in China. But after negotiating with the Chinese government for two months, Google failed to receive the unfiltered engine requirement.

Google first offered a Chinese language version of its search engine in 2000. Six years later, Google set up its own office in Shanghai of China and it started to operate Google.cn, which meant Google officially entered the Chinese market in 2006. In order not to entering the Chinese market hastily, Google hired Kaifu Lee as their founding president. Kaifu Lee is a capable leader who was the former Vice President of Interactive Services of Microsoft. Google had been putting so much effort in successfully surviving in China’s tough market during the past four years. Since Google is the world’s biggest searching engine, it’s entry to China makes the Chinese search alliance pay a high attention to it.

Unlike the United States, China is a communist country in which only one party takes main control of the whole society. In some aspects, the rule of free speech is very strict. Even though there are no laws in writing to say that citizens cannot talk about the politics and are not allowed to criticize the government, the invisible rule is there. It stopped people from getting sensitive information and sharing opposite political opinions on the internet. So many historical facts had been hidden to the back but people who had experienced them would never forget it. Based on these rules, the cyber censorship is required to implement in every single search engine. As a result to fight against the law, many foreign websites are even blocked in China, such as Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, Google Blogger and ect.

In fact, about five years ago, before Google came into the Chinese market, some people had already made the prediction about what had happened to Google today. Any foreign companies who want to start their business in China have to follow the Chinese rules and no expectations are accept. Actually Google promised to filter the search result at the begging of their business, but with the unlimited numbers of the sensitive issues need to be block, Google feels that their ultimate desire don’t work well in China. People can’t have the best service here. Google thinks that the search engine should be neutral and the reviewing should be transparent. Google doesn’t want to shield the opinions of either side because that makes it unfair. The Chinese government doesn’t want Google to be a political tool but the government itself makes it political first. Google’s variety of its service and wealth of its information makes it strong and famous, but what makes Google have to face to the dilemma today is also because of them.

From the fact of Google quite from the Chinese market, it shows that the free speech is a big problem in the country. The government controls the whole society and just let people know and say what they want them to. One of the main reasons which form this type of society is the history. In the ancient time, the land was divided into many parts, each of the parts had their own leaders. The person who is the most powerful and the strongest will be the leader of the society. The leaders help and protect their people. With the development of the society, people were not satisfied with the limited lands. They want to own more and be more powerful. Wars on the land started. As time goes by, the land was finally become a unified country which was Qin Dynasty at about two thousand years ago. The emperor made the rules that he was the only controller of the whole country. In order to prevent people from against him, he started to take actions to control people’s thoughts, such as burn all the books and bury Confucian scholars. He set the society into a new type which he wanted and easier for him to in charge of the country. The old Autocratic Monarchy was developed by the leaders of different dynasties and has been in the society for thousand of years. Even though it has been destroyed long time ago, but the thoughts of that leader are the sovereign and everyone has to respect and follow the orders without doubts are still keeping deep in people’s mind.

Google was started in the United States which has a completely different social system as China, this makes Google hard to survive in the Chinese society if it doesn’t change some of its rules. However, Google’s ultimate desire is to provide unfiltered search results to Chinese users. This agreement did not succeed in the past, is not succeeding now, and will not succeed easily in the future.
Google’s exit not only influences on the company itself but also affects China. For Google itself, there are actually not much bad effects. Yes, some people may say that Google has lost a big market, it gets less profit. But, the fact is most of Google’s services in China are free. In 2008, Google earned 210 million dollars in China, which took only 1% of its total revenue all around the world.

In the past, so many people noticed that, on the Google.cn, there is no way to log on to the Google account and it even doesn’t save users’ data. Because Google highly values their users’ privacy they did not think their users’ information could be protected under China’s censor. Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil”, but to implement the cyber censorship in China was against both their motto and human rights. In contrast, Google’s reputation has risen by give up the potential market instead of violating its rules. Google quits the Chinese market, but it wins a larger market all over the world.

On the other side, for most Chinese internet users, it may not be a big deal and even don’t have any changes that Google disappears from their life. If they can’t use Google, there are still some other local searching engines for them to use. What about the Chinese Internet market? What about Googles competitors? With the rapid development of the Internet in China, more and more different types of searching engines come out. Baidu, which is the biggest local searching engine in China, losing it’s only competitor in the Chinese market, will it slow down its improvement of the technology, will it lower its standard of the searching quality? For an athlete, the most terrible thing is no rival, this makes him lose his goals and momentum. Baidu itself doesn’t have many technical innovation, Google’s leave may makes it’s goal offset to the marketing thereby reduce to quality to obtain profit and more fake advertising would appear in the searching results.

Otherwise, Google’s leave changes the impact of the Chinese investment environment. The other foreign companies are hesitating to step into this gap or continue investing in this complex and difficult market, where they have to play properly with Chinese authorities. They start to doubt that if they can really succeed and have profit in the Chinese market. For instance, Yahoo and Microsoft feel less of safety. A report from India says Dell Corporation is considering moving more of its Asian operations from China to India. As a result, China will face more complicated challenges to achieve advanced internet technologies. In addition, Google is a crucial and major channel for foreigners to seek information about China. A giant bridge which connects East and West will collapse if Google is completely out of China.

China is developing and it needs to learn the advanced technology and experience from other foreign countries. “Don’t be evil.” is what Chinese should learn. Endless regulating the internet will not assist the populous country to grow healthily. Therefore, Google’s withdrawal won’t be permanent. Every party should do no evil so that Chinese government won’t persist in cyber censorship to prevent Chinese internet users searching in a free engine. Consequently, Chinese citizens can someday surf the Internet without restraint, like any other people throughout the world.







Reference

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Yue Guang. (2010). Analyze the effects of Google’s exits from China. China Daily. May 1, 2010.

Feng Huang.(2010). Overall process of Google’s exits. People’s Daily. May 2, 2010.

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