Google or China: Which Is More Powerful?
July 16, 2010
Public relations and marketing hoo-hah aside. Companies that tangle with countries learn three things not taught in computer science 101. First, countries have hard and soft force. You can stand in line for hours and not get a driver’s license. You can find yourself stopped on the street, searched, handcuffed, and jailed. No “please” or “may I”. Second, countries have the ability to make laws and enforce them. The enforcement can be indirect, requiring a person to spend hours in a waiting room for an appointment to find out what form has to be submitted. Or, the enforcement can be seizure of hardware, software, and information as the Norwegian authorities did in October 2008 to Fast Search & Transfer SA. Third, countries have lots of friends who understand the value of favors. I am not suggesting that a government might say, “Hey, how’s your mom now that she has lost her spot in the oncology ward?”, but friends operate in interesting ways.
Which is more powerful. The finger of the state or the ant entity? Image source: http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/the_ant_bully.jpg
Navigate to a story “China: Google Backed Down over Censorship Laws”, which may or may not be true. My hunch is that one or more of the three things not taught in CS 101 may have been operating. The story reported:
Beijing’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced that license approval and renewal had been granted to Google China after the company had agreed to respect Chinese laws. If true, this would amount to a climb-down and major humiliation for the company, which announced in January that it would no longer agree to censorship of its content in China.
Let’s assume the story is false; that is, disinformation. Google looks pretty dorky. After its Julius Caesar moment, the Chinese PR people took advantage of an opportunity to make really smart Google look really slow at basic addition.
Let’s assume the story is true; that is, valid information. Google looks pretty dorky. After its Julius Caesar moment, the resolution of the Google China dust up makes it clear that China is a pretty powerful force and Google had to find a way to regain a shot at the world’s largest market. Shareholders have a right to get a management team that works for the shareholders, not for some quasi-epistemological Zen event.
Either way, what have we learned about the risks of a single company acting as if it were a country? Alas, probably not too much. Maybe Australia or Germany will help the Chinese lesson take hold?
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2010
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