I don't think so. If they had loudly and publicly stated that they were not going to do any business in China because of the human rights violations there I think it would have been a much stronger statement.
Now it looks to me as though they figure the income they make in China isn't worth the continued PR headache, or, alternatively, they decided to leave anyway and they use the occasion to polish up their image.
I'm very cynical when it comes to large companies doing things for the public good, but you could already tell that I guess.
Shell, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google (and many others beside) they all have their skeletons in the cupboard in this respect.
I guess we'll have to disagree regarding the headlines.
Still, if you apply the cynical view consistently, then Google refusing to do business in China can be seen as Google making a calculation, deciding they can't make enough money in China to justify the headache/bad PR, and claiming the decision is because of human rights issues. Same interpretation, 2 years earlier.
I think there is a substantial difference between saying a loud and clear 'No!' to the largest growth market on the planet before entering or saying it after several years of mapping that market.
For sure the calculation today is a lot more refined than it was several years ago, and probably the figures in the spreadsheets are smaller than they were back then.
>I think it would have been a much stronger statement.
To who are they trying to make a statement? If to "the rest of the world" then your statement makes sense. However, if they're trying to make a statement to the Chinese population it's probably better that google demonstrates their services worth then pulls the plug.
If the Chinese population would figure very high in their book then they would have made the statement earlier, and that statement would have been in Chinese, not in English.
It is clearly intended for consumption by the rest of the world.
Now it looks to me as though they figure the income they make in China isn't worth the continued PR headache, or, alternatively, they decided to leave anyway and they use the occasion to polish up their image.
I'm very cynical when it comes to large companies doing things for the public good, but you could already tell that I guess.
Shell, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google (and many others beside) they all have their skeletons in the cupboard in this respect.