Legal, Cultural and Ethical Challenges - Google in China - Essay Example

The company has been committed to protecting the integrity of all search results. However, it faced serious challenges while operating in China where the government censors politically sensitive sites and contents. Till 2005, Google was providing services to its Chinese users from its US unit. However, the company realized the fact that China would be one of the largest markets in near future. Hence, in 2006 it decided to set up a different home page in Chinese. The site is controlled and maintained by the Chinese employees who work in the company’s Shanghai and Beijing offices. The main challenge that Google faced was to meet up its users’ expectation while not violating the Chinese government’s rules regarding the content of politically sensitive issues. Google has been famous for providing all the relevant search results irrespective of the nature of the subject of the search. As a result, when the company started its full-fledged operation in China, users expected that they could access more information. However, Google had to abide by the Chinese rule and hence declared that the company would enable Chinese users to access “the greatest amount of information possible” (Henninger, 2006). The company was unable to provide the best information regarding subjects like democratic reform, the Falun Gong movement, Taiwanese independence and the Tiananmen Square massacre. As a consequence, several experts especially the human rights activists showed their protest against the company. Google tried to manage the situation by saying that it is actually better to provide limited information rather than provide nothing. This was, though, not in alignment with Google’s ethical values, but the company had to compromise in order to manage the legal challenges from the Chinese government.
Role of Host Government
In the case of Google, the Chinese government is the host government that has played a significant role in limiting Google’s ability to provide information to its Chinese users. The Chinese government has a strong policy regarding the nature of the information that is to be revealed to the people of the country. It has been very cautious so that the common Chinese people cannot gain insight into sensitive subjects like democratic reform, the Falun Gong movement, Taiwanese independence and the Tiananmen Square massacre. The government has developed a huge firewall between the internet services in other parts of the world and the same in China. Such a firewall enables the censors in blocking all the sites which are not from China and which include contents that are politically sensitive. In 2002, when Google used to serve its Chinese users from the US, the Chinese government blocked the site from being used in the country. In fact, all the users from China were redirected to another search engine which is a rival of Google. However, two weeks later the ‘block’ was removed. In 2006 when Google started a separate home page in Chinese only for its Chinese users, everyone expected that they could access all the information that was out of reach till then. However, Google had to limit its ability due to regulations of the Chinese government.
The Strategic and Operational Challenges
Managers of almost all the firms that are truly global like Google face several strategic and operational challenges.