Google China Case Study
Eduardo Fajardo
University of Phoenix
MGT 448
Ronald Jodlowski
April 8, 2010
Services are provided by a vast majority of companies worldwide to many of the international markets. When providing services or products outside the national borders, companies must abide and are subject to the local laws where they provide such service. Enter China a communist regime that has a rapid economic growth rate and a mercantile practice that resembles more a socialist country. Google provides an Internet search engine to many countries worldwide under the premise of its mission statement “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful” ("Corporate information," 2010). Google has been providing a Chinese language version of its service to China since 2000 although operated mainly from the United States. China’s Internet policies (Great Firewall) “restricts and bans using the Internet to subvert state power and wreck national unity, to incite ethnic hatred and division, to promote cults and to distribute content that is pornographic, salacious, violent or terrorist. China has an ample legal basis for punishing such harmful content, and there is no room for doubting this” (Friedman, 2010). The Chinese language version of Google’s service was blocked by the Chinese Government and most of its services unavailable due to restrictions to accessibility to the service. In 2006 Google decided to launch Google.cn providing service directly from China.
Prior to making the decision to initiate the service directly from China the management at Google had to consider many of the local legal restrictions. Legally the Chinese Government has the right to choose what content is disseminated to its public and free to block whatever it deems dangerous to the well being of its country’s sovereignty. With these restrictions in mind Google opened the Chinese based service with limited...