Google’s Pull-out Threatens Chinese Access to Openness
I believe that this week’s news about Google’s threat to pull out of the Chinese market has far reaching implications for the ultimate opportunity to provide more openness. David Drummond, Google’s Chief Legal Officer was interviewed earlier this week on CNBC (my apologies in advance for the really lame graphics, sound effects and screaming reporter):
Although Gmail was not yet a service available on google.cn, it was a service that many Chinese used on gmail.com. And email is only one of the beneficial services available on Gmail. Gmail (and its tightly associated Gtalk) is one of the leading providers of HD Voice. Local Chinese Internet service providers Baidu and TenCent also offer HD Voice, but their ability to interconnect Chinese with international callers may not ultimately be as powerful as Google’s capability to do so.
During graduate school at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, I participated in a two week seminar in China on the ins and outs of doing business there. Besides being very impressed with what I saw and the companies that I visited, it was very clear that there were a multitude of challenges to succeeding and that the effort was not for the faint of heart. In many of the articles that I have read in the last week, I was surprised to read the speculation that Google’s true motivation for its actions was the second place ranking of its search engine. Considering the challenges involved, I think that Google has accomplished a lot in the short time that it has been engaged in China.
Ultimately, voice and video over IP has the power to connect people in ways that aren’t fully possible via email or other more static information technologies. This ability to connect and exchange ideas is an opportunity that all nations benefit from. Hopefully, the Chinese government and Google can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement to provide the Chinese with the ability to reach out and connect with the rest of the world. They have a lot to learn from us, and we have a lot to learn from them.
