Case Name :      Google, Inc.: “Figuring Out How to Deal with China”

Authors :           Anne T. Lawrence

Source:              Babson College

Case ID:             BAB131

Discipline :        General Management

Case Length :    21 pages

Solution sample availability : YES

Plagiarism : NO (100% Original work)

Would it be possible for Google to enter China without violating its informal corporate motto, “Don’t Be Evil?” In 2005, Google, Inc.’s top management team and board of directors struggled to decide if the company should enter China–and if so, how. Since 2000, the company had offered a Chinese-language version of its popular search engine hosted on servers outside China. However, Chinese users found this service slow and unreliable, and Google was rapidly losing market share, particularly to the Chinese firm Baidu. At the same time, the number of Internet users in China–and with them the potential for online advertising revenue–had been growing almost exponentially. Yet, serious ethical questions remained unresolved. China operated the most far-reaching and sophisticated system of Internet censorship in the world. Any Internet firm doing business there would have to filter content that the communist regime considered offensive. Moreover, the Chinese government had demanded that other U.S. Internet firms identify individuals who had used their e-mail or blogs to criticize the authorities, and at least one dissident had been jailed as a result. Was doing business in China compatible with Google’s mission to make the world’s information “universally accessible and useful?”