Google Inc.

The internet in China was controlled through both the government censorship and self-censorship. Google suffered a lot of competition from Baidu – a Chinese search engine company that had an upper hand due to its origin, since the internet content getting in and out of China was heavily expurgated by the Chinese government, thus this led to users using the Google search engine excessive delays. The first strategy employed by Google to give it an upper hand in China search market was to retain its Chinese-language version of Google. com that was accommodated in the USA but that could be able to handle search requests deriving from China .

Using this strategy Google was assured it would avoid the censorship Chinese laws since the facilities were not within the China’s physical boundaries and Google was not entitled in acquiring license from the Chinese government in order to operate their business . In 2004, Google comprehended that its strategy was not forthcoming due to intermittent inaccessibilities and extreme search delays hampered by content filtering by the Chinese authorities .

In 2005, Google applied another strategy by making two key appointments – first Dr. Kai-Fu Lee left Microsoft to head Google’s entry in China. His goal was “to make advanced technologies accessible and useful to every user, as well as to be a part of the vibrant growth and innovation in China today. ” Later again Johnny Chou was appointed as the President of Sales and development, Greater China – where he played a role in supporting sales and distribution, research and development in China so as Google to have all the resources it needed to succeed.

In April 2005, Google got authorization from the Ministry of Information Industry in China by getting Internet Content Provider license, which required it to filter its content. Google announced the opening of a representative office in Shanghai (Mainland China). In January 2006, Google launched Google. cn which was housed in China and subject to Chinese filtering . This time the product was faster and more reliable and offered more and better search results for all but a couple of politically sensitive issues. Google branded its product and strategized itself against the competition from other competitors by

1. Keeping personal information outside china through its web-based email service – Gmail and its web-blog-hosting service – the blogger.
2. Revealing the existence of general filtering to the users.
3. Maintaining the Chinese-language version of Google. com.

Through these strategies, Google anticipated to protect its users’ privacy and confidentiality through hosting the Google’s email and blogging services outside Chinese territory. It also did conform to the Chinese laws and regulations by eliminating materials and links from sources that the Chinese government considered to be harmful. It also started performing searches to see what exactly was filtered and to what extent and determine the license required to some content. By employing these policies Google has been able to perform better than Baidu – the Chinese Search Engine Company among others. The studies have explicitly fulfilled that Chinese users, once they started using Google, preferred it to any other search engine.