Donald Starling
MGT 4478 XZIC (International Business)
August 26, 2011

1. What philosophical principle did Google’s managers adopt when deciding that the benefits of operating in China outweighed the costs?
Google’s managers used the utilitarian philosophy, which is weighing good versus bad. Utilitarianism is committed to the maximization of good and the minimization of bad. Utilitarianism weighs carefully the social benefits and cost of a business action and to purse only the actions where the benefits outweigh the cost. Google’s managers evidently saw good margin for profit and it outweighed all other issues that may arise. According to the case study on page 154 China is a huge internet market with over 100 million users and still growing. Google decided to use self censorship into order to get into China. Google had to follow Chinese regulations that block some political sensitive topics. Google agreed to do this because of the profit potential, which seems to be an example of the Friedman doctrine which says that the only social responsibility of a company is to increase profits as long as the company stays within the rules of law. All of this does however go against googles mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally acceptable and useful.
2. Do you think Google should have entered China and engaged in self-censorship, given the company’s long-standing mantra “don’t be evil”? Is it better to engage in self-censorship than have the government censor for you?
Personally, I don’t think google should have entered China, because to do so they had to engage in self-censorship which compromised the mission that good has made millions on. This is the same as giving on person something that another can’t have. I am both sides of the fence with the second question asked. In one way I think it is better to engage in self-censorship and on the other hand I think it would have been better for the Chinese government to do it. If the Chinese government were the ones doing the censoring then google would be able to say that they are giving the Chinese all the information, but the government is the ones that are restricting what is read. On the other hand it could be beneficial for google to engage in self-censorship because it has a little more control over what is regulated and as it stated in the case study, google is able to show what is regulated at the bottom of the page.
3. If all foreign search engine companies declined to invest directly in China due to concerns over censorship, what do you think the results would be? Who would benefit most from this action? Who would lose the most?
I think the results of all foreign search engines not entering china would result in what is already happening; the Chinese be fully controlled by government and thinking that all foreign countries are bad. This is what the Chinese government wants. The Chinese government would benefit from not having foreign search engines the most because it makes it easier for them to have total control. It allows them to let citizens see what they want them to see. The Chinese government has convinced all of its citizens that the best way of life is the life that they give them. This is a communistic philosophy and it doesn’t have a place in today’s society. The Chinese citizens would lose the most because they will be denied seeing what is out there. The internet would bring so much cultural diversity, and the government does not want that. China uses it own search engine call Baidu which controls 70% of China’s market shares.

References

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/13/AR2010011302908.html

http://searchengineland.com/google-makes-modest-comeback-in-china-61601

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/15/googles-ordeal-in-china/