Mgt 439 Google Case Study
Anthony Lee
Case Study Google Inc.
Texas A& M Commerce
Google’s Mission, Ethical Principles, and Involvement in China Google is the world leader in search engines for the internet. The companies Mission Statement is “To organize the world’s information and make it universally acceptable and useful”. With this mission in mind Google has built a search engine, that based on key words or phrases entered by a user will scour the web for articles, videos, images, pdf’s and other items and return relevant information that then can be used by the searcher. They drive revenue based upon relevant advertising that is served up alongside the relevant organic (unpaid) search results. These ads are clearly labeled as sponsored results. Part of Google’s philosophy “Ten Things we know to be true Number 6. You can make money without doing Evil” is one of their main mantras stressed in the company. This mantra gave hope to some activist groups that want freedom of information to countries whose government’s sensor free flow of information. One of which is the largest country on earth China. Google offered a Chinese language product in 2000. This product was operated from the United States. In 2002 Google’s site was mysteriously blocked and users were directed to a Chinese competitor’s site. Google’s site was restored but it was apparent that it was suffering from increasing governmental censorship. Also the service was being degraded by slow responses. By 2004 Google realized that China was a market too vast not to be involved in and started making plans to open direct in China as some of their competition already had been doing. This decision poses a predicament with their core value of “Don’t be evil”, based upon China’s human rights violations and government censorship. In 2006 Google opened their Chinese based search engine site Google.cn. Beginning in 2002 and intensifying over the next several years Google is confronted with the challenge of the
Case Study Google Inc.
Texas A& M Commerce
Google’s Mission, Ethical Principles, and Involvement in China Google is the world leader in search engines for the internet. The companies Mission Statement is “To organize the world’s information and make it universally acceptable and useful”. With this mission in mind Google has built a search engine, that based on key words or phrases entered by a user will scour the web for articles, videos, images, pdf’s and other items and return relevant information that then can be used by the searcher. They drive revenue based upon relevant advertising that is served up alongside the relevant organic (unpaid) search results. These ads are clearly labeled as sponsored results. Part of Google’s philosophy “Ten Things we know to be true Number 6. You can make money without doing Evil” is one of their main mantras stressed in the company. This mantra gave hope to some activist groups that want freedom of information to countries whose government’s sensor free flow of information. One of which is the largest country on earth China. Google offered a Chinese language product in 2000. This product was operated from the United States. In 2002 Google’s site was mysteriously blocked and users were directed to a Chinese competitor’s site. Google’s site was restored but it was apparent that it was suffering from increasing governmental censorship. Also the service was being degraded by slow responses. By 2004 Google realized that China was a market too vast not to be involved in and started making plans to open direct in China as some of their competition already had been doing. This decision poses a predicament with their core value of “Don’t be evil”, based upon China’s human rights violations and government censorship. In 2006 Google opened their Chinese based search engine site Google.cn. Beginning in 2002 and intensifying over the next several years Google is confronted with the challenge of the