Chinese Web Search Giant Serves Two Masters

The Justice Department charged that Microsoft was unjustly forcing their customers to use the Microsoft internet browser to purchase music online. When a user clicks on the “Shop for Music Online” links in Windows, they are directed to use Microsoft’s internet browser, even if they want to use another browser (Bridis, 2004). This is unfair because it does not allow consumers to choose their own products. Furthermore, it allows Microsoft to reduce competition with rival browsers.

The economy in China is doing well. China has in its recent years reached financial stability. This is due to the fact that there is a high level of domestic demand. Because of this, many companies around the world begin to invest in the Chinese market. China is also one of the fastest growing when it comes to Information Technology and has been able to attract companies such as Google and even Microsoft. It has been forecasted that the Internet industry in China is expected to increase at a rate of about ten percent within the next five years. This is great news because Google will be able to benefit.

Today, Google, Inc. is worth more than General Motors, McDonald's and Disney combined, and the company continues to model the way in the global technology industry in which it competes. In fact, the company's name has become a verb and it is common practice for consumers to "Google" what they want to find online. To determine how Google, Inc. reached this dazzling level of performance in a relatively short period of time, this paper provides an analysis of the three external environments in which Google competes, the general environment, the industry environment and the competitor environment. Next, a discussion of two specific strategic issues as well as opportunities and threats that are facing Google, Inc. is followed by a summary of the research and important findings in the conclusion.

Internet censorship and the requirement of self-censorship not only harm the economy inside China, but also are negatively affecting China in aspects of international commercial trade, even as globalization becomes the trend of today’s world. Chinese Internet censorship is applied to both directions; not only blocks Chinese Internet users’ access to certain foreign websites, but also prevents foreigners from knowing the truth about China through refusal of releasing reliable information. So when foreign companies want to enter the Chinese market, they face a serious question: “How do you assess an investment opportunity if no reliable information about social tensions, corruption or

Read the case carefully and answer the following questions: 1.Till 2005, eBay EachNet was the leader in the Chinese e-commerce market, controlling more than half of it. But eBay EachNet soon lost its market leadership position to Taobao.com (Taobao). In this context, analyze the reasons that can be attributed to Taobao’s edge over eBay. 2.a. To enable people to trade with each other, Pierre Omidyar created a marketplace in September 1995 which was later called eBay. By mid 1997, eBay received one million page hits per

Google Company is one of the global leaders in technology and in enabling people access information from the internet through their efficient search engines. Google immediately gained the attention of the internet sector for being a better search engine than its competitors (Wheelen, Hunger, Hoffman, & Bamford, 2015). This was after a tremendous effort in marketing their services and capturing a large market worldwide. However, there being so many risks and challenges in this line of business Google has had the urge to come up with new strategies so that they are able to overcome any challenge before them. The major problem that Google has

Corporations that move into China have long recognized that internet censorship is a fact of life. In 2006,

Google entered China in 2006 with high hopes of taking over the Chinese internet market. In order to become a major player for internet search engines in China, however, they had buckled and filtered search results according to the Chinese government. When Google.cn was launched, a loud public outcry over its giving in to the Chinese government on censoring and filtering search engine results, the company faced a communications crisis. Since Google had always been known for its free thinking, this seemed a vast contradiction. From a communications standpoint, Google’s greatest vulnerability in this crisis lay with a tarnished public image.

The Alibaba group has thrived in the Chinese e-commerce sector from its inception in 1998. They currently account for over 70% of online shopping in China and delivered annual revenues of $636 million in the 12month period ending June 2009 (case p1-2). Alibaba’s successes are due to multiple factors that have allowed them to create corporate advantage, and thus establish market leadership in China (Case p1). The configuration and coordination of Alibaba’s

Internet in China is owned by the government. The Chinese government monitor and control all online access routes by using a highly advanced and extensive gatekeeping program (The Economist, 2013) known as the Great Firewall of China. Internet is China is so strictly controlled that businesses and individuals may only rent “bandwidth from state-owned entities” (Herold, 2012).

Baidu adopted a strategy that focuses on searches in Chinese. The company has an advantage on this as the team understood the Chinese language, culture and the operations as opposed to other overseas competitors.

In 1998, Stanford University graduates Larry Page and Sergey Brin combined their ingenuity and built a search engine called “BackRub” that evolved into what is now known as Google. Google, with over 150 domains, now functions as a search engine that offers many different products and services including web applications, advertising, sports scores, stock quotes, headlines, addresses, videos, etc. Google’s focus is “to provide useful and relevant information to the millions of people around the world as they rely on us (Google) to provide the answers they are seeking.”

Position: China wants to enforce Google the same level of censorship so that it can appear to the world as an independent and powerful actor in the global marketplace.

Companies like Apple, have decided that it is best to get in with the downloading business. However, an end to the illegal downloading conflict remains to be realized. The RIAA and associated artists continue to wage war against illegal downloaders while computer savvy audiences persist in sharing music files online every day. While it is undoubtedly true that downloading music is a crime, it remains to be proven that it is wrong. Without establishing this principle, most downloader's are likely to continue the activity. Even with new, inexpensive and available means of downloading files, they can still be shared for free online. The rift must be repaired between music lovers who feel that they have been taken advantage of in the past and recording companies and artists who worry about their future livelihood.

Following the success of Netscape and its web browser, Internet became a resource and communication platform idolized by many IT students in the universities. What started off as a hobby-cum-research[1] work by Jerry Yang (now Chief of Yahoo!) and David Filo (Co-founder of Yahoo!) for their Ph.D. dissertations; has evolved and became an Internet sensation over time. What they did was to compile all their favourite web links to form an online directory for easy navigation in the World Wide Web. The duo’s work immediately garnered a lot of attention from many surfers in the Internet world and before they realized it, Yahoo! became one of the most highly visited websites of all time. The duo saw the