Google

American companies operating in foreign countries face lot of problems from the local government and politicians. In many countries, they are asked to give bribes and do other illegal stuff.

Should American companies doing business abroad uphold American laws and values when dealing with local authorities? There are lots of opinions for and against. Those living outside the United States are of the view that these companies should obey the local law. Those living in the United States argue that these companies should ignore the local law if they are asked to do something that USA would consider as illegal.

Take for example Google. They have a huge presence in China. They are not number one there, yet. It is about to become number one in China. China has 388 million internet users. Google earns billions of dollars every year from their Chinese operations. They have a tremendous future growth potential.

China, which is not a democratic country, has asked many “favors” from Google. And, Google has cooperated with them to some extent. It abided by Chinese requests to censor its search results. If any one inside China wants to search for “Tiananmen” or “human rights” or “Falun Gong” they will get almost nothing. Lot of people in USA criticized Google for this. They complained that Google is censoring information to please Chinese authorities in order to develop the Chinese market.

Recently Chinese hackers tried to break into the Gmail accounts of Chinese activists. The attack was unsuccessful.

Finally, Google said “enough is enough”.

Google has made a surprise move --- it's threatening to pull out of China, if it doesn't see an end to state-controlled censorship and mysterious cyber attacks on some of its Chinese e-mail users. The company says it can't tolerate increasing Internet censorship --- and the government's reluctance to put an end to cyber attacks on human rights activists who use Gmail."

Google said that it was sharing the information not just because of the security and human rights implications "but because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech".

Kudos to Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Google's decision certainly sets an example in terms of a company trying to do what's best for the user and not just whatever increases the profit margins.

What does the Chinese government officials say? “We are not censoring anything. We are only doing our jobs protecting our country from criminals, terrorists and others who want to destroy our country”.