Google's Problems in China

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Case Details:

Case Code : BENV001
Case Length : 13 Pages
Period : 2000-2006
Pub Date : 2006
Teaching Note : Available
Organization : Google China
Industry : Internet Search Engines
Countries : China

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This case study was compiled from published sources, and is intended to be used as a basis for class discussion. It is not intended to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a management situation. Nor is it a primary information source.

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Google Meets 'The Great Firewall' Contd...

Google had been providing services for users in China through its global search engine www.google.com, which has its servers in the US. This meant that the content had to pass through Chinese firewalls, which often stalled the browser and slowed it down.

The slowdown was also associated with filtering and censorship carried out by the Chinese government and Internet service providers (ISPs). For this reason, Google decided to place its servers in China and agreed to self-censor the content and let the users know of it. However, human rights activists and advocates of freedom of the press all over the world expressed their displeasure at Google's move.

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Reporters without Borders (RWB)⁶ said, "Google's statements about respecting online privacy are the height of hypocrisy in view of its strategy in China."⁷

Background Note

Google was founded by Larry Page (Page) and Sergey Brin (Brin), who were students at Stanford University, California, USA.

While at Stanford, Page logged on to the World Wide Web, looking for a topic for his doctoral thesis. He decided to work on the link structure of the Web. He found that though links from one page to the other could be followed easily, it was important to keep track of the back-links as well. He started working on backlinks⁸ and called his project 'BackRub.' Brin joined Page in working on BackRub.

Together, they created a ranking system which ranked the links depending on their importance. They came up with an algorithm called PageRank,⁹ which took into account the number of links to a particular site and the number of links into the linking sites.¹⁰ ...

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6] RWB is an international non-governmental organization that promotes freedom of the press.

7] "Google Move 'Black Day' for China,"www.bbc.co.uk, January 25, 2006.

8] Backlinks are incoming links to a website. The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website.

9] PageRank is a patented method (an algorithm) to assign a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of measuring its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. A patent for PageRank was granted in September 2001 and was assigned to Stanford University.

10] For example, many websites link to Dell.com. These can include technology providers like Intel, business partners, logistics providers and also the customers who use Dell machines. Technology provider Intel could be linked to Dell's site and Intel itself would have thousands of sites linked to it. On the other hand, a customer using Dell's machine, would not have many sites linked to his site. Then Intel would be placed at a higher rank as compared to a Dell user as per the PageRank system.