TECHdodo

During all the Buzz going on about Google Buzz and its privacy issues, Google has said despite their threats a month ago that they would pull out of China after experiencing a cyber attack from that country, that they will not be leaving China any time soon. I speculated at the time of their threat in this post, that they wouldn’t, because Google makes money by people seeing their ads, and there are a lot of people in China to look at ads.

When asked directly about why they were still in China, and why they were still censoring results, and how that related to the whole Do No Evil policy of Google, Sergei Brin responded with this.

Brin:

Perhaps people don’t believe this, but the [couldn't hear] discussion about entering China in 2006 as we did and including the announcement last month, our focus is really been what’s best for the Chinese people. It’s not … about our particular revenue or profit or what not. And I think there are many potential answers there. It’s a very difficult question.

That is why they are going to stay in China. Even though it puts them at risk, and even though they have to censor results, they are going to stay, but not for the money, no no, for the people, for the Chinese people, because Google feels they can make a positive difference in their lives. Of course they would have the exact same attitude even if there wasn’t any money to be made there at all. If Sergey actually believes this, and maybe he does, he is definitely at odds with someone who needs to have responsibility to shareholders. Not unusual actually for an entrepreneur’s creation to grow up and become something they no longer want it to be.