Some applaud Google for standing up to China. Choosing principle over profit is a valid decision, and Google’s wish to use their power for “good” leaves little room for complaint. Even as a fluent half-Chinese I had first hand experience with the huge temptation to face China’s rules with incomprehension, while living and working in Beijing the 2.5 years leading up to the Olympic games. Also, I knew the isolating effect that government bans on the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, Blogger, Flickr and the BBC can have on people and businesses.
So does Brin’s plea for Obama’s backing against “regulations in China [that] effectively prevent us from being competitive” make Google a principled hero?
Praising Google’s decision to “stand up to the censors” a San Francisco Chronicle editorial concludes that “Google can't dodge a challenge to one of its fundamental principles. Free flow of information is its business.”
Google is revolutionary because it has shown us how various types of information served in various ways can make life better for us the people. By threatening to leave China, Google sends the message it’s willing to turn away not just from profit, but from people too. Does engaging the world’s largest online market symbolize condoning its government? Or, is it simply a decision to keep going on a difficult but worthwhile mission to add value to the lives of a particularly large number of people? That means looking beyond politics to the service provided.
Back in 2006, when Google was still starting out in China and it was one of my first clients at Saatchi & Saatchi Beijing, I was astonished to find that its Chinese map service gave driving directions for downtown Beijing. Most people in Chinese cities got around by taxi, or by driver, walking, biking, or public transport. It was Baidu that gave Chinese people public transport results and the most location-specific business information.
Most people assume that because Google is the biggest search engine, it's the biggest search engine in China too. Outside China most people haven't even heard of Baidu. But 58.6% of the 384 million Chinese online choose local Baidu over Google’s 35.6% market share, according to last quarter’s results.
It’s been a few years since I was in China, so it could be that Google eventually picked up Baidu’s insight into Chinese interest in mp3 and games searches. But its failure to understand that step by step driving directions were not what the Chinese person on the other end of its "free flow of information" actually wanted set the pattern for a failure to understand – and eventually adapt – to the world's most populous country.
Google’s decision to shift focus away from being useful to people in China, to making a political stand could be seen as appropriate. Companies with power and influence like Google and Microsoft can make a difference. But, assuming Google’s stand is appropriate, it is premature given its market position.
While it is supremely disturbing that Chinese universities may be behind a code hack that stole some of Google’s IP, it is very dangerous that in a world this open some of the best companies in the world choose not to persist in trying to understand and provide for the Chinese user journey.
Google’s exit means increased isolation of people and businesses in China (though Microsoft’s Bing will be happy to step in). It also means fewer opportunities for the rest of the world to understand China. It is easy to see China either as too big (a threat), or too far away (unfamiliar) to matter. Both extremes lose track of something important – putting people first.
Google’s business should be about connecting humanity worldwide with information that is as useful as possible. Sure, censorship stands in the way, and it’s understandable that Google is fed up. But there is a lot Google can offer people besides results for “Tiananmen Square 1989” to be competitive. Why not focus on just doing the best they can for people? Not indulging in symbolic gestures that lead to tensions, isolating China more.
As a graduate of idealistic and (wanna-still-be) radical UC Berkeley, I am at home with Silicon Valley’s digital “open information” ethos. In fact the “free flow of information” principle is one I happily evangelize in my daily life as a Digital Experience Planner. “Free speech” via digital – sounds good. And, by extension “democracy”– sure, I am for it.
But when much of the developed world has decided that access to consumption is passé yet access to information is a human right, in China people go online less to seek hard and fast information, and more to explore new worlds (often imaginary rather than real) through games, alternate personalities on blogs, and music.
With 527 million subscribers to China Mobile, Chinese are skipping steps in the technology uptake game. The fact is there are no set steps in much of what is happening in China. It’s a place of as many contradictions and surprises as any of the places each of us know deeply enough to notice.
CNET reports: "Google trailed homegrown search engine Baidu by a significant margin in the country, but Google was a favorite of younger users and technology enthusiasts." Chinese youth, technology enthusiasts, and many others with an interest in using the global standard search engine have had faith in Google despite its “endearing” blind spots about local relevance. I remember my colleagues and friends in Beijing watching with interest how Google would improve in the years following launch. Four years on, they have been let down by the company that aims “not to be evil”.