Why does Google adapt to the Chinese government
Introductory
With the popularity of Google as main internet search engine [View Pie Chart], intelligence agencies have been more then interested in Internet surveillance under consumers. By determining the geolocation of the consumer, by looking at the unique IP-addresses, almost 80% can be tracked back to a major city (node) and even 90% can be allocated to a country. For marketing related issues, such as advertisements, the geolocation can play an important role providing culture backgrounds, adjusting point-of-sales adepting to suit consumer needs and so on.
In 2002 Chinese governmental instances started to worry about the fact that Google was storing IP number, a time stamp, a unique cookie ID, and browser information of their users. If this information is available to the National Security Agency from Google -- and current U.S. laws almost require Google to provide this information to the feds, especially when the Internet user is a non-U.S. citizen in a country that's of national security interest to the U.S. -- then China may be well-advised to block the use of U.S. engines to protect their own national security.
Unleash the Google Dragon
While other major competitors, Yahoo and MSN, already entered China with their shops and search engines, Google decided to follow them by agreeing on Chinese policies and comply to Chinese law to expand their services. With the Chinese economy showing great potential in growth, every company faces the same issues as Google. Should we step in and respect the laws of a country although it might not fit our own strategy? In an interview CNN had with one of the founders, Sergey Brin defended their decision by stating that it was better to be there than not be there at all. He continued by saying that it was "better for Chinese Web users, because ultimately they would get more information, though not quite all of it".
Issues
With the entering of Google in the Chinese market of search engines it is important to state that there are also issues that occur. While the main driving force for Google's expansion is to expand their services, Google agreed on accepting Chinese regulations by blocking (political) sensitive key words. Google justifies this decision by stating that the Chinese firewall was successfully blocking 50% of all keyword results and in the future most applications would not be available anymore. They felt by participating there, they could offer their services better eventhough not all information would be available.
While the first step has been made, Google should also be thinking of the steps that would follow. As Human Rights Watch boss Ken Roth already mentioned, what will happen when the Chinese authorities would like to know who or how many people are searching on "Taiwan" or any other political issues? Would Google provide them with the additional information, such like IP addresses, so the Chinese governments could monitor them? IF so, Google could unwillingly provide the names and information for imprisonment of individuals.