Authors: David Barboza & Brad Stone
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/16/technology/16failure.html?pagewanted=1&ref=asia
Date: January 15, 2010
Summary: Although Google may pull out of China, it is not the only American Internet giant that failed there. Because of government censorship and favouritism of local firms, Yahoo, EBay and MySpace did not manage to gain great market share as they anticipated. Google came to China with great expectations, but it is defeated by its local rival, Baidu, for Baidu is the first to provide easy links to download pirated songs and movies. Yahoo, which took over a local Internet giant Alibaba, reaped a financial windfall in China at first. However, it got into trouble when it released the Chinese dissidents’ e-mails to the government. EBay lost its lead in e-commerce market, since it did not offer the service to allow live conversations between buyers and sellers as Taobao did. MySpace did not succeed in China either because of its strong rival Tencent. Some people say these American companies need to understand the Chinese market and think locally, despite the government restrictions. They should learn about flexibility and tactics from the local entrepreneurs.
Comments: It is surprising that Google is going to pull out of China, because it is quite a popular search engine among Chinese, especially the younger and better-educated people, though it is not as popular as Baidu. I do not see Google’s 33 percent market share as a failure, and actually it is doing better than any other American Internet Giants, like Yahoo, EBay and MySpace as mentioned. Google still has much space to improve, but it is leaving because of frustration with government restrictions. Google might disagree with the censorship in China, but it is not a good idea to publicly challenge it and discomfit the Chinese government. It will surely influence its business in China, so that Google will never have any chance of defeating Baidu. I think Google should rethink about retreating, for it is a great loss to both Google and China.
Zhang Ningxin(Joy)
Jan 17, 2010
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from roy (wei lai)
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point.It is unwise for Google to challenge the censorship in China. If google wants to do business in china, it has to follow the local rules. of course we can not say that the censotship is good but we can do nothing about it. if google insits that Chinese government shouldn't restrict its search results, it has to leave and give up the business in China. In my opinion, Google should learn from the local internet companies like baidu and tencent of he want to make his business bigger in China. the best way is to make advantage of its high technologies and provide more applications to Chinese internet users. only in this way can google do better in china. still, I like google and hope it to stay.
Although standing on the same stance, my opinion is slightly different from you. The biggest reason of Google’s failure in China is its defeat by local companies rather than the censorship of the Internet. Every government has the right to ensure that information published in media follows the country’s constitution. In fact, it exists around the world, including the U.S. Thus it should not be the excuse for the failure of Google. Moreover, from the perspective of a patriot, it is no good for Chinese citizens to depend too much on the services provided from the U.S. As is known to all, the internet has become the most important means of mass media; it wields huge influence on the everyday life of people. It’s hard to imagine that the media and means of communication of one country depends entirely on another country, especially great chasm of political beliefs exist between these two counties. This is the reason why most domestic corporations choose service provided from their compatriots instead of foreigners. In addition, the advantage of Google in technology and high quality service has been counteracted by its high operating cost. Compared to this, Bai du, the most popular domestic searching engine cater to the need and taste of local people and thus enjoys over 70% of market share. Under this situation, to quit this huge market might be the last resort for Google before they lose money.
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