Was Google Moving Out of China an Ethical Decision?

Today I would like to carry on the topic of brand image, which I have been discussing in the last couple of posts. These have included 3 ways to improve your businesses brand image and also 3 reasons that you should look at environmental issues which affect your business. I would like to carry on discussing brand image, because it is one of the most important aspects of business. I will be explaining this in more detail in a post next week, so stay tuned.

For this post though, I would like to take a different approach and actually look at a business and see if they took a decision because of ethics and also discuss the other reason why this business took the decision. The topic of debate, as such, is Google moving out of China because of the censorship they had to obey by and whether this reason was made purely because of ethics, or because they have alternative motives.

The History of Google’s Brand Image

Where I would like to start, is by making a small background image of Google and what they started out to achieve, in the sense of their brand image. When Google first came to light, it was when Microsoft dominated the market, and was seen as the evil ones in the world of business, mainly because they were making so much money and dominating the market. This is when Google made its stance, they wanted to be seen as the good guys and to do so when they became a public limited company, they had their mission statement as ‘Do No Evil’. This shows that they wanted their brand image to stand out against the competitors in the market and they wanted to be seen as the friendly guys, the business that people could talk to and get along with.

Since then however, Google has become a massive force in the world of computers and technology and this means that it has gained the image of being the evil empire. It seems this is just what happens when people become jealous of others success!

What Did Google Not Like About China

In the rest of the world, Google is the market leader, it holds staggering percentages against its rivals and this means that it is in the money and making substantial profits every year. However, this wasn’t the case in China, where the company was behind the market leader ‘Baidu’, who have about 56% of the market, when Google only have 20%. They were also generating $275 million of revenue from China a year, but it is thought that none of this was turned into profit.
As well as the market share and profits problems, Google was not happy with the way the Chinese government censors information on the internet. When searching for certain things on the internet, Google had to make the results page blank, or it wouldn’t be allowed to operate in China. This went against Google’s image and therefore looked bad for the company.
This is where the problems for us arise. Did Google pull out because they wanted to keep their ‘Do No Evil’ brand image? Or did they pull out because they weren’t the market leader and they weren’t making any profit from the operations? Below I have compiled a list of why they did it for ethical reasons and why they didn’t:

Google Pulled Out Because of Ethical Reasons

• They wanted to return their brand back to when they started, with the ‘Do No Evil’ mission statement
• Improve brand image in America and Europe, where many people think the Chinese government go a bit far with their censorship. This would help them gain more sales of their Adword business and also bring back faith, which may have been lost over the years.
• Even though China is the biggest internet user and also the biggest growing market in the world, they still pulled out, which in business terms, is death, showing that they did it because of their own problems with the censorship, not the money problems.

Google Pulled our Because of Business Reasons

• They were making no profits from the venture, showing it was lost cause and they should focus on expanding in Europe and America.
• Microsoft was staying in China and they may have wanted to do the opposite to try and remain distant from them, like they set out to do when they first started.

All in all, we will never know why Google pulled out of China, and this is the point I have wanted to make. If you run a business, or help in decisions, or even just interested, then from this you can learn that people will always think there is an alternative reason why you did something, people will always suspect, but you need to make the right decision which you think the majority of people will believe. I’m not saying lie, but if you can do something for two reasons, why not?

Image – Google Gives China the Finger – CainAndToddBenson