Google in China Case Study

Google In China

Issue

Google wants to make a decision whether to exit China according to the company do not want to continue censorship by the Chinese Government anymore, as stated in Google’s Memo, January 12, 2010, in the Exhibit 1. The Chinese government takes control over the flow of information on the internet and also demands to remove all the data that concern the political in any search results. Google company who works on the principle of Internet security is very concern with this issue and has to make an important decision to solve this.

The Root Cause Analysis Process

Step One: Define the Problem

Google is a big company that provides superior search-engine technology to find and organize information through the internet. The company’s mission is “to organized the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (John, 2010, Pg1), and the company’s core principle is “Do no Evil”. Google enter the Chinese market since 2005 because China is the second-biggest retail market in the world and also represented a dynamic fast-growing market.

The company gained market share in the second rang following the first one is Baidu companies, which the owners are Chinese as well. The 2009 company revenue is 1% of the corporate revenue of the company and from one-third of this revenue comes from the Chinese business that placing advertises on Google.com rather than Google.cn (John, 2010, Pg3).

After determining what happens and its reason, Google discovered that there was an attack on the computer system that originated from China. There is also evidence suggests that the main goal of hackers is to access the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Google concerned about this intervention from the Chinese government which against the company's principles and practices, this issue can be very risky for the company's reputation. Further, doing business in China does not return the appropriate benefits as it should be which could also cause dissatisfied for the shareholders.

Step Two: Collect Data

According to the information we have from people around Google and the evidence that “the company had detected highly sophisticated attacks originating from China on its computer systems and those of other companies”. Google.cn launched in 2006 to give an “access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results.” (John, 2010, Exhibit1). The proof that put Google into a difficult situation since it came into China is the situation that it found many attacks from China hacking its system to censor the information that might be sensitive to its regime. The Chinese government stated clearly that “ Foreign firms in China should respect China’s laws and regulations, and respect China’s public customs and tradition, and assume the corresponding social responsibilities, and of cause Google is no exception” (John, 2010) Google know that the Chinese regulation on censorship and blocking of information will be applied in China. Google has put a lot of effort and has been tried to follow its company mission and its principles while China doesn’t allow a completely open result of the user searching especially the China’s political and human right results.

There were a lot of conflicts between China’s information control policy and the Google ways that focus on the user experience on solving a problem without intervention. The company adheres to do business that tells all the results of keyword searches while the censorship might generate the incomplete result, but the CEO of the company is willing to trade-off to that benefits from information for people in China. However, the major revenue did not come from Google.cn, the consequence of the result is that the company’s revenue is less and did not stem from the primary Google.CN. Further, the company gains an only second range of market share following Baidu which is the same naturality and other mobile application might not have much intervention as the search engine. Google understand its condition in China that they chose to trade off some system investment on regulations while the China government keep removing a political object from the search results which destroy the google system.

Step Three: Identify Possible Causal Factors

According to RCA-template, we found that since 2009 that company acknowledges that there was the hacker attack the email account which considers as the strong level of intervention that they found violate their core principle. On top of that, it is obvious that the external environment in this country in terms of the open Internet is not well developing at this moment. In addition, the hacker attack incident has contributed to the reason that Chinese's internet system is not yet improving and convincing Google unpleasant to continue censorship on our search anymore. In order to identify possible causal factors, Google can ask themselves for the deeper source of the problem with many questions in different angles and adopt the 5whys into identifying a process.

What conditions allow the problem to occur?

As an agreement when deciding to launch a company operating in China already state that Google willing to put the censorship in the sensitive issue according to the Chinese government require. On the other hand, the company’s purpose in China is the intention to provide more information for Chinese people rather than focus on its business.

What other problems surround the occurrence of the central problem?

The issue on hacking the g-mail accounts which the company considered as the violation of intellectual property. This consequence many controversies in the company security issue as well as the trustworthiness of China government. There were many foreign companies left the market to the Chinese company such as eBay and Myspace. While Facebook and Twitter were facing the same problem on China’s censorship as well as Google.

5Whys Analysis

Q: Why is Google considering to stop serving its services in China?

A: There was a high attack that hacks to its system to remove some search results and violated the human right of the user.

Q: Why?

A: China government need to protect the stability of the regime within the Communist party’s power.

Q: Why?

A: It is about the