Gmail and google.com are still available, but as of today, I can’t get into my Google Documents account. A sign of things to come? I had foolishly stored the latest copy of my spring travel plans in a google document, thinking it was an ideal place to put something both Martin and I would need to access and edit. Now I can’t even access it through a proxy server… so it’s back to the last version I saved on my computer a few months ago.
I still support Google, even though I fully expect to go into painful withdrawal as their services start to disappear on the mainland. I’ve heard some people here in China say that Google’s decision to potentially withdraw from China was purely a business decision, a retreat after their failure in the Chinese market, where they “only” have around 30% of the market. I personally find it hard to believe that 30% of a market of hundreds of millions of up-and-coming internet users can be counted as a failure (and Google’s share is also reportedly the wealthiest, best-educated and therefore most lucrative slice of the market). Based on what I know about Google, I think their decision was (at least mainly) driven by principle. But even if it was, it’s a complicated world, and hard to say what the best course of action for a company like Google really is. To give an example of the other side of the argument, Evan Osnos translates part of a Baidu executive’s response to Google’s move:
Common sense: Unequal access to information is one of the major causes of social inequality. The most important information to people is not secrets from inside Zhongnanhai [the Chinese leadership compound] but common information about economics, culture, and technology. Providing convenient access to that information, to make up for the inequity in information, is one of the ways that a search engine can be of social and political significance.
From this perspective, trying to provide convenient access to information for people and give them real value is a responsible approach. It’s not about making a great spectacle of claiming to “do no evil” and then dying a heroic glorious death by turning against the government. It is fine to find a way to exit, but not by playing on the emotions of a population that is under such tight control. That is immoral.
The political system cannot be changed in the short run. In China, every enterprise and individual has to dance with shackles on. It is the same in other countries, to varying degrees. But that is the reality. Trying your best to do your part, within a limited environment, is a sincere way to conduct yourself as a company and a person.