Since 2006, human rights advocates have blasted Google’s decision to enter the Chinese search market since it did so under the condition that it censor search results to the Chinese government’s liking. Yesterday afternoon, Google’s Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, announced that Google is “reconsidering” its China strategy due to several attacks in which the email accounts of several human rights activists were targeted. While it’s unclear right now who is responsible for the hacking attempts, it seems to have been the last straw for Google, whose relationship with the Chinese government has recently soured over claims that Google illegally scanned the books of Chinese authors.
There is so much more to both sides of this story. If you look at the blogs today, the human rights folks would have you believe this is based only on the attack on the activists’ email accounts. Not true. The fact that it was human rights activists who were targeted is virtually irrelevant, only serving to narrow down the list of suspects. The hack attempt was not the only problem Google has with China – it’s merely the last straw in dealing with a country whose traditional Confucian culture, Communist government and recent embrace of capitalism are all at odds.
Let’s really kick this off with a little background on me. Aside from being an SEO who geeks out over her job on a daily basis, I am a breath away from finishing an MBA in International Business. In business school, I’ve cultivated China as a specialty. While international search is not currently a part of what I do, Google’s involvement in China is the natural intersection of my career and education. What follows is a lot of commentary and speculation. I don’t have any insider info on Google. This is pieced together from months of observation and several years of studying the Chinese business environment.
Better than a soap opera
In 2006, China was getting significant buzz about having the fastest growing economy in the world. It also had the fastest growing middle class whose ascendancy was leading them to the internet in unprecedented numbers. So if you’re a large company eying the international market, China makes sense. High growth, terrific momentum, and one of the world’s largest populations. Google essentially made a land grab knowing that if it didn’t a competitor would. When Google first entered the Chinese market, it did so after giving intense consideration to the ethical implications of censoring search results. While human rights advocates find it a distasteful affirmation of Chinese censorship, as a business student I can see the logic. Censorship was, frankly, the cost of doing business. There was no middle ground.
Lo and behold, in 2009 Bing announced its own intentions to take a stab at China, agreeing to the same censorship conditions which Google was required to meet, and the human rights debate began anew. For me, this just proved the point – if you want to do business in China, you must play by China’s rules. However, there is so much more to the debate than the black and white evil/not evil argument that most idealists let on. Agreeing to censor those results does not make a company evil. In the case of China, it can be a foot in the door. Look at how China has traditionally handled foreign joint ventures: initially imposing severe restrictions, and slowly loosening the reins as they became more comfortable with the idea. So as a search engine, you get your foot in the door, keep your nose clean, and wait for the government to relax. The fact that Google and Bing are there at all is a sort of encouragement, a message that the West is watching, and a show of faith that China gradually will move in the “right” direction – a strategy which is hinted at in Google’s official blog.
I put “right” in quotes because we’re using a definition of “right” which is very much informed by a Western, European-based culture and trying to impose that upon a Chinese culture which evolved independently, with its own moral codes which don’t always line up so neatly with ours. Neither culture is right or wrong – they are only different.
That doesn’t excuse bad behavior, though. Google is right to be on the defensive now that these security breaches have been discovered. While no specific statement has been made so far, the obvious subtext in Google’s announcement yesterday is that the CCP is trying to spy on human rights activists by hacking into their email accounts.
In recent weeks, Google has been tangling with China on other issues as well, namely the intellectual property rights of Chinese authors whose books Google scanned. Many Chinese business scholars familiar with the difficulties of enforcing intellectual property laws in China will undoubtedly find the accusation ironic, and when considered alongside the email hacking attempts, it underscores the difficulty of doing business in a country that is both Communist and unabashedly capitalist at the same time.
For Google, the hacking attempt appears to be the last straw. First they were censored, a condition to which they grudgingly agreed. They never managed to gain traction in China, where Baidu consistently enjoys 63.9% market share to Google’s 33.1%. Then China accuses Google of breaking intellectual property laws while quietly hacking into the email accounts of government enemies and committing some intellectual property theft of its own? I can’t say I blame Google one bit for its “reconsideration”.
One option Google is exploring is removing the government-mandated censorship filter. While this could do wonders for their market share, I believe it would be short-lived. China would simply pull the plug on Google itself. The idea that removing the filter is any kind of rebellion at all is actually something of a joke since the filter is pretty easy to circumvent – the only searches that are censored are those made in Simplified Chinese. Using search queries with Western characters brings up unfiltered results. Not to mention the proxy servers, used most prominently during last year’s Iranian election crisis, that just bypass the government filters altogether.
The other is to shut down Google.cn entirely. From a purely business perspective, the attempt at market penetration was a clear failure, even without all the accusations of illegal activity. All signs indicate that Baidu is entrenched so firmly that any market entrant will be forced to settle for second place. With 3G spreading quickly throughout China, Google is said to be exploring the mobile web market, which is poised to take off in the next year, but now that niche may be filled by Bing instead.
Also yesterday, Baidu was hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army, which is best known for hacking Twitter awhile back. Though most tech watchers are puzzled over the choice of Baidu, a Chinese search engine virtually unknown to the average joe outside China, to launch what is suspected to be a critique of American involvement in Iranian affairs, the truth may be simpler than anyone suspects: I suspect that Baidu’s defenses are just weaker than those at Google and Bing, making it an easier target to hit. China will have to step up its search engine security if it expects Baidu to maintain its market share – Bing will be all too happy to fill the void without that pesky “don’t be evil” motto to get in the way, and more outages will drive Chinese searchers to find more stable alternatives.
So let’s look at all this through the SEO lens now. What would Google pulling out of China mean to us?
Awhile back, one of my American clients mentioned he wanted to target China. He was already ranking number one in his market in Google’s organic listings. When I conduct the search in Google.cn, he’s still number one. In Baidu, he’s nowhere to be found. Chinese searchers who previously relied on Google will revert to Baidu, eliminating my client from their consideration. While SEOs in the Chinese market should already be familiar with optimizing for Baidu, Google will no longer be there as a sort of safety net.
Mobile sites will become important. The vast majority of the Chinese population went directly from no home phone to a cell phone, skipping the land line entirely. Baidu is only beginning to make inroads into the mobile web market, possibly leaving the door open to Bing or another competitor.
Wrapping this up…
Let’s be real here. China has a long way to go on the human rights front if it’s ever going to make the activists happy, but it’s not the Great Evil that it’s being painted as today. China is moving forward, but on no one’s terms but its own. China will not be bullied and will not hesitate to push back, having learned its lesson the hard way from the Opium Wars that eventually led them to slam the doors shut in the first place. The Party is fond of “five-year plans” – they’re on the eleventh five-year plan now – and it would be virtually impossible for China to construct an effective plan which did not address digital information issues such as search engine censorship. The current five-year plan ends this year. It will be fascinating to see where it all goes from here.
