From the perspective of Google it is obviously important to be present in the largest market on Earth both commercially and strategically, and not to let its competitors have it all for themselves.
From the perspective of the US (Google is an American company) it is obviously tactically and strategically important to have the best information possible on what is going on in China. This is much, much easier to achieve when American companies are present "on the ground".
For example, I am sure that this project gives the US a pretty good insight on what the Chinese government does. It would be much more difficult to ask Tencent how the Chinese system works, wouldn't it?
Google doesn’t really have world-wide competitors in the Chinese search market. Baidu is basically a large scale healthcare scam, while Bing is struggling
Foreign companies face different rules in China when compared to Chinese ones via selective enforcement of law. They will not be exposed to the same real Chinese system.
From a world wide perspective, google yielding the search market to China has yet to effect them since their competitors operating there are not at all competitive.
At this point, it is unlikely that Baidu will ever be competitive outside of China, especially with protectionism that prevents it from actually having to compete with google in any case. Bing has had its chance and hasn’t performed.
Likewise, search is increasingly less relevant as time goes on, so longer term vision likely drifts away from it anyways (which is more likely the real reason why google wants back into China).
Thought experiment: If Google doesn't move in, someone else will eventually fill the vacuum. Who?
Suppose that Chinese-born-and-bred search-engine-and-advertising-company, through virtue of having access to a massive economic resource, succeeds broadly and then enters the western markets. What then?
Not trying to justify any of this, but it's worth discussing.
> If Google doesn't move in, someone else will eventually fill the vacuum. Who?
Someone with less skills and expertise, who will hopefully make more mistakes implementing censorship? Or maybe someone with more skin in the game (e.g. locals) who might actually be more motivated to sabotage it?
But, conversely, Google implementing such a thing in China - and justifying it as moral there by these arguments - would also give them skills and expertise to do it US in the future, and a canned excuse as to why it's okay.
> Suppose that Chinese-born-and-bred search-engine-and-advertising-company, through virtue of having access to a massive economic resource, succeeds broadly and then enters the western markets. What then?
> If Google doesn't move in, someone else will eventually fill the vacuum. Who?
This is eerily reminiscent of arguments that people have used around Project Maven (cloud compute for drone footage). At this point I am starting to wonder if this style of argument has a fundamental weakness. E.g. if immoral act "X" is going to be done by someone, is it logical that the most moral actor "A" must do this? In the limit, this has the most moral actors doing the most evil. In fact, it has the most moral actors being the first to jump in to do evil, before anyone else even gets a chance to. That seems totally backwards.
There is no vacuum. Existing Chinese companies already provide all of the same services there that Google provides in the rest of the world. For example Baidu is the most heavily used search engine.
From the perspective of the US (Google is an American company) it is obviously tactically and strategically important to have the best information possible on what is going on in China. This is much, much easier to achieve when American companies are present "on the ground". For example, I am sure that this project gives the US a pretty good insight on what the Chinese government does. It would be much more difficult to ask Tencent how the Chinese system works, wouldn't it?