Ethics

Two standard ethical approaches are applicable in the analysis of this case utilitarian and Kantian (deontological). The utilitarian technique insists on maximization of good, and Kant argues for treating the others as an end and not simply as means. Googles ethical decision to stop censoring its Chinese language site at first agreed only with the Kantian approach, but its subsequent move conformed to utilitarian principle too.

China is the most populated country in the world, and perhaps the most rapidly developing economy of the present time. The rise of Chinas booming economy and the countrys emergence as the manufacturing hub of the world in the 21st century have been nothing short of spectacular. Peoples Republic of China had been a staunch communist country since its inception in 1949. Thereafter the country suffered for decades under the oppressive Maoist regime. It was only in the late 1970s, under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, that China started moving toward capitalism. Dengs policies of reform and openness put China back on the world stage, and Chinas economy started rebounding by becoming more and more modernized and liberalized.

There was a brief period in 1978-79, known as the Beijing Spring, when China experimented with complete freedom of speech and freedom of press. Unfortunately this did not last for long. Still, China seemed to make gradual progress in the direction of openness and freedom  until the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 which took the entire world by shock. This event and the governments subsequent stance on it made it very clear that the Soviet-style oppressiveness of the Chinese regime would continue despite the fact that the whole world, including Russia, was moving in the direction of more freedom and democracy. Since the late 1990s, China has been rushing on the path of greater economic development by leaps and bounds, along with a few other major developing nations in Asia and elsewhere. However, the Chinese governments repressive approach to freedom of expression and human rights did not change substantially, even when so many other positive changes took place in the Chinese economy and society. And even the advent of the Internet  the epitome of free flow of information  did not do much to mollify the hardened stance of the Chinese government with regard to freedom of information. The Chinese Internet continued to be heavily censored, subjected to all kinds of restrictions and regulations.

Google is the Internet giant that has almost become synonymous with the Internet. For a few years the Chinese site of Google reluctantly abided by the governments policies of censorship, but then a time came when it could not take it anymore. The confrontation between Google and the Chinese government had to happen. The most interesting thing about this clash between Google and China, which was in headlines for quite some time recently, is that Googles fight is based on ethical grounds. Googles opposition to the mighty government of China has been widely hailed as a triumph of ethics over business considerations. In January, 2010, Google took a strong moral stand, declaring that it was no longer willing to censor its search results and might pull out of China if it came to that. Google has millions of users in China and if the company were to discontinue its China operations, it could lose a vast chunk of its Chinese customer base and huge sums of revenue along with it. Yet Google has been adamant not to give in to the unreasonable and unethical demands of the Chinese government, and was preparing itself to do whatever it deemed was the right thing to do, no matter what the consequences may be. Godaddy.com too followed Googles suit. Such resistance to Chinese governments policies were praised in some quarters.

The Chinese government is not going to change its policies overnight. But hopefully the decisions of corporations like Google and GoDaddy indicate a recognition that whats good for human rights and free speech is also good for their business. And if Chinas leaders recognize this, it may give them pause to rethink their strategy. (Butterfiled, 2010)

Overall, however, the reaction was mixed.

Before Google started its Chinese services in 2005, Google.com was accessible in China but in a limited way. The government used to restrict the search results heavily. Baidu.com was the more popular search engine in China. Even when Google.cn came, Baidu remained no.1, but Googles use has been growing. Google then expressed its willingness to voluntarily comply with the governments Internet censorship laws, thereby making the censorship of its search results self-imposed. This Google did thinking that it could better serve the cause of freedom of information by working along with the government rather than against the government. By voluntarily submitting itself to the Golden Shield Project, Google thought that it would have more bargaining power with the government in allowing relatively better access to the search results. Flouting the governments censorship policies, on the other hand, could result in serious disruption of Google services or severe degradation of the quality of Googles search results. Therefore though it was morally abhorrent to the Googles management to lamely give in to Chinese governments paranoid censorship policies, they had to do it for practical reasons. Still, Google was censured by the critics for doing so.

And then in January of 2010, Gmail accounts of a couple of Chinese human rights activists were hacked, as it was found out, by attacks originating from mainland China. Only the Chinese government had the motive to do so. Considering this act as a breach of the good will that Google was trying to foster between itself and Beijing, Google decided to quit the cooperation pact with the government. Google announced that it would stop censoring its search results and should overt or covert pressure mount on the company to continue censorship, the company would cease its operations in China entirely. The filtering of the results on Google.cn was disabled for a brief time subsequently, but was enabled again. There were no explanations given, but it would seem like Google was experimenting with the procedure.

Thereafter it came to light that the hacking of Google accounts by China was not an isolated event but was just a part of an extensive hacking operation, named Operation Aurora by the investigators at the cyber security company McAfee. Many prominent Internet companies such as Adobe, Yahoo and Symantec, as well as US defense installations such as Northrop Grumman were targeted over a period of several months in the second half of the year 2009. In fact, it is also well known that China keeps hacking Americas government and military installations, stealing data and technology. Therefore, in the wake of increasingly objectionable and dangerous activities of the Chinese government, Google had to reconsider its decision to cooperate with the it. That Google itself became a victim of a cyber attack by the Chinese government changed the way Google looked at the situation.

At that time Google had an ulterior plan which was not revealed. The company only stated that it would overcome the problem of censorship without going outside the legal framework. Now, in China it was not possible lawfully to do away with censorship. What Google said made sense only after it made the move. From March 22, 2010, Google began rerouting all the traffic coming to Google.cn site to Google.com.hk, i.e., Google Hong Kong. Hong Kong is part of China and yet it operates within a separate judicial framework. Its judicial power is not subject to most of Chinese laws (Helft, Barboza, 2010).  

By doing this, Google has successfully solved a big problem, in fact the question arises why it could not do so much earlier on itself. This simple move by Google also helped it to extricate itself from a potential ethical quandary. Because when Google announced that it was likely to stop its services in the Chinese language, people began to ask what would happen to millions of Internet users in China who could be left with only state-controlled media and state-controlled Internet.

Googles closure of Google.cn would leave the internet in China almost entirely dominated by local companies. That helps the Chinese governments efforts to control information, because it can more easily control local companies, but it means foreign participation in one of the fastest-growing parts of Chinas economy will be limited, and it leaves Chinese users increasingly isolated. (Chao, Worthen, 2010)

This was the irony of the situation Google was contemplating to pull down Google.cn for ethical reasons, namely, depriving people of right information or abetting in the spread of disinformation by censoring the Internet is ethically unacceptable but if it proceeded with its proposal it would be instrumental in bringing about more darkness into the already bleak Internet scene of China. Googles move away from China could in fact have many more repercussions too. It could, for example, send a signal to other foreign Internet companies wanting to come to China that this country is an inhospitable place to work from. In all, the implications for an average Chinese Internet user who seeks to browse Internet for learning and knowledge would be severely disadvantaged. Internet in China could end up becoming Chinternet, markedly different from the global Internet. The regular prominent global Internet sites and services such as Amazon and MSN Messenger are being less and less used in China, and are giving way to indigenous substitutes. Yahoo and Ebay have already exited the scene. Facebook is blocked in China. Though MySpace China is operative, it is less popular than a Chinese social networking site.

China is the largest Internet market in the world, with about 400 million users, and with a quarter million new users being added every day. One of the major purposes of the Internet is to bring the world together, but if the largest Internet base in the world is being increasingly isolated with the main body, then this severely affects the integrity and rationale of the Internet itself. Googles exit from China, if carried out, could start trends that do not bode well for the future of the Internet. Besides, Googles clash with the Chinese government was also much politicized, and it marked another blow to the already strained U.S. Sino relations. The political relationship between the U.S. and China, the current military superpowers of the world, is a delicate one and if it deteriorates further, it could have grave consequences for the entire world. Event the Third World War cannot be ruled out. And if any such thing were to happen, Google would have contributed to it. Therefore Google appeared to the entire world to be in a complex ethical dilemma, even as it was holding serious talks with the Chinese government in the weeks leading up to its March 22 move. On the one hand, it is a matter of principle for Google not let its search results be heavily censored, a principle which it could put aside for sometime but not for long. On the other hand, if it left China just like it said it would, some very undesirable consequences could follow which would not be good either for China or for the world.

It was a classic ethical dilemma. The situation that Google was in was not unlike the one the U.S. Treasury was in during March of 2008, when it was about to bailout a sinking Wall Street giant, Bear Stearns. This move was a blow to the much-cherished basic principles of American capitalism. And yet the Treasury chose to intervene, because if it did not, Bear Stearns was so deeply interconnected with the rest of the firms on the Wall Street that if it went out of business it could take down a whole lot of firms with it, and the effect could cascade. There was clear and present moral hazard in the Treasurys move and yet the bailout was implemented because the whole economy would be in jeopardy if it was not. Similarly, if it had no alternative, Google should have compromised on its principle and continued its China operations bearing the burden of censorship. But fortunately, Google had an easy option out, which was to move its base to Hong Kong. Googles move has angered Chinese officials, and may possibly escalate the conflict in the near future however, at the date of this writing, the latest news is that Googles relations with China appear stable. (AFP 2010)          

To sum up the ethical aspects of the situation, Googles decision to stop censoring anti-Chinese government and potentially anti-Chinese government information on the web can be considered to be based on a Kantian approach to ethics. It kept the interests of the Chinese Internet user, who has the right to information, in mind  over and above its own business interests. Google was wiling to sacrifice huge amounts of revenue, and give away its business share in the Chinese market to local companies, all for the sake of a principle. Google treated the typical Chinese customer as an end, and not simply as a means to promote its own business. Hence Googles move was widely applauded in the press, though many had some reservations too. Googles decision not to censor information, however, did not necessarily stick by the utilitarian criterion of morality, and in fact it did not even fulfill the Kantian criterion fully. Googles decision not to censor its search results shows its intention to respect the Chinese Internet users right for information, in theory but by pulling away from the Chinese market it could further ruin the Chinese Internet users chances of accessing better quality information. And it certainly seemed like if Google stopped censoring its results, it would need to pull away sooner or later.

By resolving this situation on March 23, 2010, by starting its Honkong-based search engine, Google could keep its Chinese language services up while at the same time not censoring information. This way, many untoward consequences of its original decision would be averted. This is the ideal solution which respects the right to information of millions of Chinese Internet users, both in theory and in practice and maximizes good in other ways too. However, the Chinese government will not accept defeat so easily and the fight between good and evil (Google and the Chinese government) is still on.