Introduction
Currently Google faces major issues regarding its operation in China. Google has been faced with the decision to comply with Chinese government regulation and censor its search engine results or take on the human rights approach of freedom of speech and eliminate censorship of searched terms. This paper will examine the case study, Google in China, and answer the following questions: What advantages and disadvantages does Google have in the Chinese market in comparison with Baidu? What is the business model of each company? And what factors should Google have considered in reaching its decision on the new approach in China?
What advantages and disadvantages does Google have in the Chinese market in comparison with Baidu?
Advantages that Google has over Baidu in the Chinese market include the public having access to un-censored search terms, Google’s AdWords and AdSense technology, and its partnership with China Mobile. Google also offers attractive applications such as “Picasa Web Album, Google Docs, Google Talk, Google Calendar and Google Checkout” (Yin & Yulin, 2010, p. 2). Some of Google’s services include “Google Earth, Google Hot List, Q&A and a free legal music download service” (Yin & Yulin, 2010, p. 3). In comparison with Baidu, Google does have some disadvantages which include its suspended “ability to search through foreign websites and its associative-word search function”, its criticism from Chinese Regulators and bad publicity from Chinese writers accusing the company of copyright infringement (Yin & Yulin, 2010, p. 3).
Baidu has several advantages over Google that are mostly associated with it being a Chinese based company, for one the search engine has “competence in pinpointing queries in the Chinese language” (Yin & Yulin, 2010, p. 4). The search engine also uses techniques to search for keywords; these techniques include link analysis, information extraction, web crawling, and