Honestly I just don't understand the short-term thinking by the West in general and companies in particular when it comes to China.
It is 100% abundantly clear that the Chinese government has no interest in "surrendering" industries to foreign competitors. If any foreign company gets reasonably successful I guarantee you the Chinese government will do something to hobble it in favour of a local competitor.
So by doing business in China Google is undermining its own values and alienating a not-insignificant number of employees who feel pretty strongly about censorship and human rights to chase a buck that they will never get because the Chinese government will make sure that they don't.
The lure of a market of a billion people is an illusion. The game is very much rigged. I don't necessarily blame China for this either. But perhaps its well past due that the West restrict access to its markets to Chinese companies in some sort of reciprocal fashion.
If the Chinese government wants you to store data in China to do business there then require Chinese companies to store their data in the US to do business there. And so on.
This is the country that starved millions of its own citizens (the Great Leap Forward), annexed Tibet (and now pretends Tibet never existed) and killed thousands of its own citizens in peaceful pro-democracy protests (Tiannemen Square), the last only ~30 years ago. How quickly we forget. And now Xi Jinping (aka "Winnie the Pooh") has abolished term limits and seems set to install himself as dictator for life in the model of Vladimir Putin.
I can't hope for much more than enough people take such a stance to wake up the leadership of these companies but I'm not holding my breath.
It is 100% abundantly clear that the Chinese government has no interest in "surrendering" industries to foreign competitors. If any foreign company gets reasonably successful I guarantee you the Chinese government will do something to hobble it in favour of a local competitor.
So by doing business in China Google is undermining its own values and alienating a not-insignificant number of employees who feel pretty strongly about censorship and human rights to chase a buck that they will never get because the Chinese government will make sure that they don't.
The lure of a market of a billion people is an illusion. The game is very much rigged. I don't necessarily blame China for this either. But perhaps its well past due that the West restrict access to its markets to Chinese companies in some sort of reciprocal fashion.
If the Chinese government wants you to store data in China to do business there then require Chinese companies to store their data in the US to do business there. And so on.
This is the country that starved millions of its own citizens (the Great Leap Forward), annexed Tibet (and now pretends Tibet never existed) and killed thousands of its own citizens in peaceful pro-democracy protests (Tiannemen Square), the last only ~30 years ago. How quickly we forget. And now Xi Jinping (aka "Winnie the Pooh") has abolished term limits and seems set to install himself as dictator for life in the model of Vladimir Putin.
I can't hope for much more than enough people take such a stance to wake up the leadership of these companies but I'm not holding my breath.