Environmental Ethics and Strategy: A Case Study of Google in China

Running head; environmental ethical and strategy 1
Environmental, ethical and strategy
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Environment ethical and strategy 2
Introduction
Censorship has been a problem between the Google search engine and different
government in the world. Through the study of service delivered in China by Google company
there have been wrangles due to lack of fairness, justice and community complain. (Carroll,
2014) The problem arises where the government of China wants to be conducting censorship
with regard to the government rules and regulations, while Google company dislike the matter
and they argue that they are capable of conducting self-censorship. (Kolk, 2016) But the
dilemma is that the national law is colliding with corporation global ethic, i.e., Google
Corporation which is refusing censorship. The corporation states that the government is not fair
and just due to the suction that its imposing to the corporation hence giving their competitors
advantage over the corporation. The community is in conflict with the government due to their
restriction in accessing information freely. (Dean, 2017) The Chinese government is anticipating
controlling even messages sent through Gmail.
The source of the problem arose when Google Corporation launched Google.cn in 2006.
(Jiang, 2014) Due to this Google’s entry into China was criticized by human rights advocates and
NGOs, and in committee hearings, members of Congress criticized the company for participating
in censorship. (Mulgan, 2014) This was due to the government wanted to take responsibility for
conducting censorship in its territory. (Zeng, 2015) In December 2009 the Google company
detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on the corporate infrastructure that was meant
to steal intellectual property from Google, (Upadhyay, 2015) The corporation claimed that China
government was responsible for the attack and that the corporation had evidence that the Chinese
attackers primary motive was to attack Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activist. Due to

Environment ethical and strategy 3
this attack, the corporation had a choice of ending its activity in China. The allegation was
termed as propaganda and false by the government of China. (Carroll, 2014)
Analysis
According to deontology ethics approach, there are consequences linked with each and
every action, either right or wrong. The action taken by China to monitor and control internet
content after Google Corporation had launched Google.cn in China had great consequence to the
country, the Google Corporation, and other search engine corporation. The wrangle rose
whereby the government of China due to political factor wanted to control internet content
including Gmail messages. (Jiang, 2014) This lead to concern whereby people were a concern on
the action of the government, for example, one of the businesswomen complained that the
government should control other materials such as pornography and stop controlling message.
(Kolk, 2016) This was because messages are confidential. Some corporation complained that
their Gmail account was being hacked. This action taken by the China government was not
favorable to all parties. The government violated people right of speech. (Mill, 2015) This
brought argument between the citizen and the government and also Google Corporation and the
government. This led to the United States criticizing China government for human right abuse by
stating that interfering with personal messages which were unethical because it violated the
principle of honesty, integrity, confidentiality, and trust.
Utilitarianism helps in determination of if an outcome is right or wrong. (Mill, 2015)
This is evident from the case of a misunderstanding that arose between the China government
and the google corporation bringing about differences that led to losses for the google company.
(Mulgan, 2014) The company decided to move its services and searches to Hong Kong which
was not much affected by the great firewall. This risked losing its mainland users and also