The Googlization of Everything

Here is the NYTimes on Google's China move today.

Here is Jonathan Zittrain's reaction.

Here is the Google blog post from David Drummond.

Here are my thoughts on the move as it breaks:

It's commercial malpractice to back out of the largest market in the world on principle. Google must have some good business reasons.

Google has long managed to conduct a search business within China while keeping potentially sensitive operations such as mail, YouTube, and blogger outside the People's Republic. This has allowed Google to do business with the largest market in the world and has insulated it from collaborating in the oppression of dissidents.

Google learned much from Yahoo's mistakes. And I think Google has been running its China operations with the utmost integrity. If Google were to pull out of China, it would have to be for some very good business reasons. It has those reasons now. China has been launching nasty attacks on its system. It frequently blocks important services that Google hosts overseas. China has made it very clear that Google should not expect a reasonable business environment in which to work.

So don't buy any lines about Google's commitment to free speech or not being evil. That's not the plane on which this is happening.

The key here is that Google is threatening to pull Google.cn out of reach of the millions of elite, cosmopolitan users within the People's Republic. Most Chinese Web users use Baidu. But Google is the choice of those who travel, do business overseas, or are expats from the United States or Europe. Those people have some pull with the Chinese government. And they will want their Google.cn.

So don't expect Google to pull out any time soon. The threat to do so might be big enough to make a difference to the cosmopolitan business class. And that might be enough to make a difference to the government