A new approach to China

Let's keep in mind that before they stood up to the Chinese government they first collaborated with them, and apparently it was the hacking (attempt) that caused them to go about face.

If someone steals your car and the next day he doesn't that doesn't make him a model citizen yet.

Google would be a model citizen if their stance had been like this when they still thought they were going to score big in China. This is in part a statement of principle and in part one that is motivated by PR.

Google has gotten some reasonably bad press recently because of Schmidts' ill thought out remarks regarding privacy, this will go a long way to make everybody forget.

So, keep your eyes open, let's give them the benefit of the doubt but let's not right away forgive and forget the past until some time has gone by and we can re-evaluate how much change there really is.

This is his:

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=andreyf

So you may be right after all.

1. Google is not withdrawing from China. They are merely deciding not to implement additional censoring measures to curry additional favor with the government.

2. They have been losing market share to an inferior but government approved search engine Baidu.

Why do you think Google China's Kai-fu Lee left after a few years in his highest position to make a relatively small startup when his track record shows he prefers large corporations like Apple, SGI, and Microsoft? Google knows they are losing ground and he was probably abandoning the sinking ship.

Another year of lost market share to government supported Baidu and the recent espionage was the last straw for Google to know that their current methods weren't working.

3. Why are you comparing them then? It's not like Google decided to make this happen so they could publicly denounce the Chinese government.

Considering their past practices with China, I would have expected them to keep silent on the matter. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the Schmidt incident influenced the scale of their reaction.

If you think Schmidt's quote did not make a big impact , that's your opinion, not fact.

But I feel compelled to point out that it's unfortunate that it's come to this. I don't agree at all with posters saying that Google was initially doing the wrong thing by being in business in China at all; as several other posters have already pointed out, Google was at least making sure the censorship was obvious, which, really, was bold already.

Moreover, the bigger point; how wrong is it for international corporations to do business in China? Yes, there are human rights abuses. I get annoyed when people seem to just enjoy using the PRC leadership as a moral punching bag without trying to understand the historical lead-up to its creation (and, really, the West helped create the conditions in China that led to its current authoritarianism to begin with). But, what is really going to be gained by corporations outright stonewalling the mainland and its business opportunities? If you really want to help people and be pragmatic, then I think you would have done as Google originally did. The potential economic opportunities created for the millions of very poor Chinese by having international business in China is not something to take lightly if you can manage to at least not worsen the position of human rights activists in China by censoring and not outright handing them over (something which I think Yahoo actually did). And, by working with the PRC, you can at least get yourself into a position where you can affect change without outright confrontation.

Again, I do agree that the hacking attempts change the game entirely and is the point at which all international corporations doing business in China need to reconsider things, but just stonewalling China for confrontation's sake is just trying to encourage another Cold War, and we don't want that.