Shana Lavender BUS 410 Google Case Study Week One January 24, 2016 Session A 1

Case Discussion Questions

1. How does Google’s mission drive strategy at the company?

Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally
acceptable and useful” [CITATION Hil12 \p 52 \l 1033 ]. Google’s mission drives
strategy at this company by attempting to get more and more individuals to use the
internet for information with speed and accuracy. The more time individuals spend on the
internet browsing information, the more revenue will be generated by Google, due to
more individuals seeing the ads provided by Google. Therefore, to provide individuals
with speed, accuracy, and usages, Google has to focus on search result enhancements and
promptness, with the long term strategy of reducing the distance between any activity and
the internet. This mission helps drive the strategy in aiding more revenue by the number
of clicks on the Google ads.

2. Is Google’s stance toward Internet search in China consistent with its mission?

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Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally

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acceptable and useful, according to Essentials of Strategic Management. Therefore,

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Google has been working towards not compromising the quality of its search results, but

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in China, Google has self-induced censorship. Some of the searches in China are either

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prohibited or do not result in any answers at all. Chinese regulations does not allow
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access to any and all information. Google calls attention to its stance through a bullet at
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the bottom of the page indicating that the information was censored. This is a clear
indication that Google’s stance toward internet search in China is consistent with its
mission of making the world’s information acceptable and useful because Google informs
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the Chinese users of Google that it is not their company censoring the information, but
their government.
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3. Do you think that Google should have entered China and engaged in self-censorship,
given the company’s long-standing mantra “Don’t be evil”?
Yes, Google should have entered China and engaged in self-censorship although Google
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has been operating on the mantra of “don’t be evil” [CITATION Hil12 \p 52 \l 1033 ].
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“China is a strategically important market” [CITATION Hil12 \p 52 \l 1033 ] with over

100 million users and growing. Google is a business, and the bottom line purpose and
mission of a business is to make revenue. Although activists had hopes of Google being
an unstoppable tool in allowing people in heavily censored societies, such as China to
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gain access to information that their government was trying to suppress [ CITATION
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Hil12 \l 1033 ]. Although Google did not prevail in that area in China’s case, it gave
them the greatest amount of information possible within their governmental authority,
while informing the Chinese citizens of its governmental censorship. Therefore Google
is still abiding by its long standing mantra of not being evil, because any and all left out
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information is not their decision and the citizens are informed, but in the terms of quality
of the search results in China it is a violation of the motto “don’t be evil”.

Is it better to engage in self-censorship than have the government censor for you?

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 Shana Lavender BUS 410 Google Case Study Week One January 24, 2016 Session A 2

In my opinion, it is better to not engage in self-censorship and have the government to

censor for you. This will show users that the integrity of your company will not be
compromised. This will allow the government to be criticized and not the company, with
hopes of the citizens causing a change in governmental censorship.
4. If all foreign search engines companies declined to invest directly in China due to
concerns over censorship, what do you think the results would be?
If all foreign search engine companies declined to invest directly in China due to
concerns over censorship many people would lose their jobs because search engines
generate job opportunities and these opportunities will be lost. Also, search engines bring
about new technologies, and the new technologies will be unknown to China so the
people and the country will be at a lost. The companies in China will not have as much
competition, but will experience a decrease in the many new innovations of the outside
world.

Who would benefit most from this action?

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Although it may seem that the domestic companies in China will benefit the most

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because of the lack of competition, no one will benefit greatly. China has a very large

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and growing market of over 100 million users so the many domestic companies will have

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the attention from only these Chinese users and all revenue generated from ads would go

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to them.
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Who would lose the most?
China would lose the most in innovation and technologies, as well as imports and exports
that they are missing due to censorship and the companies removing themselves from
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directly investing in China. But the many foreign search engine companies will lose in
major prospects to generate revenue from China’s 100 million users.
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