WHY DID GOOGLE ISSUE THE

STATEMENT OFJANUARY12?

FORBIDDEN SEARCHES IN
CHINA
1. Tiananmen Square
It is a public place in Beijing, China and is the largest open urban area in
world
In 1989,square witnessed studentled demonstration demanding freedom for
press
This was joined by intellectuals and urban workers
Protesters defy government call to disperse
Army tanks and infantry were sent to Tiananmen Square to crush the protests
This resulted in death of around 2500 civilian , while some claimed it was
around 5000

COMPARISON OF SEARCHES

2. Falun Gong
Founded by Li Hongzhi , Falun Gong is aspect of Chinese medicine
involving the coordination of different breathing patterns with
variousphysical posture of body
advocates practice of five sets of meditation exercises ,introduced
in China in 1992.
By late 1990s it gain popularity all over the world.
In 1999, the government of China started suppressing Falun Gong
referring the practice as evil

CENSORSHIP AGAINST
GOOGLES PRINCIPLES
This kind of censorship leads to insufficiency and inaccuracy of search
result
This is not what Google wants
Violates the mission and principle of company
Googles mission is To organise the worlds information and make it
universally acceptable and useful and do no evil
The statement doesnt aim at accusing of the cyber attacks across the
Internet and helping users make their computer much safer
This is declaration that Google wont compromise on the censorship
anymore

Can google take comfort from the reactions of stakeholders so far?

Reactions of different
Stakeholders
Government

Partners

Competitors

Against the freedom of speech

ideology

Baidu had close tie up with

government
Blocked websites and censored
searches on sensitive topics to
cooperate with governments
laws and regulations

Tried to implement laws and

regulations over information
flow
Insisted on removing from
search that it considered
politically objectionable

Had highest market share (64%)

as compared to Google (31%)
NASDAQ stock rose 11% on
January 13 from $$386.49 to
$428.19

Customers
Showed mixed reactions for and
against the cause
Favour for local player: Larger
market share of Baidu (64%) in
2009 while google controlled
just 31% market share despite
of having cutting edge
technologies

Created a negative impact

on
ongoing
business
relationships
Planned to postpone or
cancel the launches of two
mobile phones made by
Samsung
and
Motorola
through China Unicom
Partnership with Orca Digital
(online music distributer)
was at risk

Shareholders
Stock price of google fell
down to $576.46 on January
(Trading at $714.87 in Dec
2007), created fear among
shareholders
Cutting off from such huge
market and growing
economies would lead to
negative image in front of

SHOULD GOOGLE EXIT CHINA?

Favorable
This bold step may enhance the image of the
company in other markets because of its moral
stance against censorship.
Revenues in 2009 were an estimated
$300mn,around 1% of corporate revenues
Google held a market share of 31% in china
compared to 64% for Baidu.
Google was against unlicensed music
downloads for free, unlike its competitor Baidu
Google was agonized by the Chinese Gov. to
control the flow of information in terms of
blocking websites and censoring searches
Theft of IP and cyber attacks, and breach of
information

Unfavorable
Googles unwillingness to tolerate censorship will
disrupt ongoing business with china.
As of 2009,Google had 80 mn of Total Internet
users in China
China is a costly affair for Google as it will loose
1% of Corporate revenue
7mn people per month were expected to gain
Internet access on mobile devices
Losing the Chinese market will be a major blow
to googles global strategy and will also affect its
future strategic layout
China was the 2nd biggest retail market in the
world which was growing rapidly in terms of its
online presence

Yes, google should leave China

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ANY NEW

ENTRANT IN CHINA

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR COMPANIES TO PUSH

BACK AGAINST CENSORSHIP HAPPY
GOVERNMENTS
Companies may submit to censorship, if they can keep delivering their services.
But when they take down content from their platform the company must be
transparent
Companies should publish a detailed annual transparency report
This report will show the number and type of content-takedown or userinformation requests they received, and the number they complied with, from
each country where they operate.
Companies can set up stringent review processes for legal takedown requests.
A stringent review can make sure governments arent taking advantage of
Internet companies

TWITTER SETTING AN EXAMPLE

As with any company, Twitter tolerance for complying with government
requests can be gleaned from its actions.
Twitters transparency report shows a sharp rise in takedown requests in
2015, driven in large part by a high volume of requests from Turkey and Russia
The company continues to operate in both of those countries.
Twitter has made changes to accommodate Iranian users that are able to
circumvent their governments Internet filters.
The company recently began allowing users with Iranian phone numbers to
activate two-factor authentication, a login option which can protect accounts
from being hacked.
Twitters actions in Iran are hailed as the ethical high-water mark for
resisting government attempts to censor access to content.