Google China policy: Sergey Brin vs. Eric Schmidt

According to Associated Press reports, “Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged Tuesday the dominant Internet company has compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands. He said Google is wrestling to make the deal work before deciding whether to reverse course.” Brin reportedly made such comments while meeting with reporters near Capitol Hill during a Net neutrality lobbying visit to Washington DC.

Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google, did not manifest similar misgivings, however, during last week’s investor conference call. Responding to a question about Google’s China operations, Schmidt said:

We have not yet seen a good reason to segregate the Chinese user from worldwide users. So far, all the evidence that we have seen is that the Chinese user is quite similar. I think it’s too early to tell how successful any of these new strategies – we announced our Chinese strategy in March. We unveiled the office there. So that’s, what? Roughly two months. We have an incredible team that has been assembled in China.

Let’s give them some time to focus on that market, bring out the localized and specialized product part of our initiative is to make sure we have the very best product in each of the markets. Chinese people, so of course the product is in Chinese. There are unique aspects of the Chinese language. We are doing all of that work, and we are doing it as quickly as we can.

I don’t see a need to change what we have done, and I think it’s probably going to be too early to call that question for many months, not just one month or two months. These things aren’t switched. Things don’t occur in a month or two, even in China.

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