Google founder defends China portal
Also: How the powerful make their way to Davos, and what they're doing instead of networking. — DAVOS, Switzerland (FORTUNE) - The World Economic Forum, a gathering of leaders from the business world, media, academics, and assorted hollywood stars and do-gooders, is taking place this week.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google has launched a China-specific search service and acknowledged removing results to operate under censorship constraints. The filtering reaches both sites questioning the Chinese government and topics including homosexuality, dating, beer and jokes, making the portal a concrete test of how far Google will adapt its product for market access.
First-order effects
- Chinese users receive a Google search product with results filtered under China’s censorship constraints, rather than the company’s standard service.
- Google gains a route into the Chinese market while making content-removal decisions part of its local search operation.
Second-order effects
- Google’s entry makes compliance with local filtering rules a competitive condition for any search provider seeking the same users, shifting differentiation beyond search quality alone.
- Chinese authorities gain a major foreign search provider operating within their content-control framework, increasing the practical importance of platform-level filtering.
Third-order effects
- If major internet platforms adopt country-specific restrictions to enter large markets, global services will be organized less around one uniform product and more around national rules governing access and speech.
The trend: Global internet platforms are beginning to trade product uniformity for access to tightly regulated national markets.