Google vs China: Really About Money, Not Evil?

The Economist magazine explains why Google's announcement earlier this week that it may quit its operations in China may be more about Google's failure to compete successfully there against its primary Chinese competitor, Baidu, than a moralistic stand against the 'Evils' of state-sanctioned hacking and search result censorship. You can read the whole article HERE, or just a few sentences below:

"In Silicon Valley, its home, Google’s change of tack in China was widely applauded. But some were asking whether it was 'more about business than thwarting evil' to quote TechCrunch, a widely read website. Besides pointing to Google’s failure to eat into Baidu’s market share, cynics noted that, whereas, according to Mr Drummond, Google’s revenues in China are 'truly immaterial', its costs are not. It employs about 700 people in China, some of them royally paid engineers, who may now may have to look for other jobs. Hacker attacks and censorship, critics say, are convenient excuses for something Google wanted to do anyway, without appearing to be retreating commercially. Google strongly rejects this interpretation."