The Foreign Correspondents

BEIJING—The move was puzzling at first. The U.S. search engine champion announced it would take up the question of censorship to the Beijing government and then withdraw from the country if the government refused to let information flows free. This would mean brinkmanship, with Google’s 30-percent market share in the gambit.

It is inconceivable that the government will back down so why the move?

If you are the optimist, like me, you would think Google finally put its foot down and cried, Enough is enough. For years the Chinese government behaved like a bully in its own internet backyard, deploying fear tactics like Cyber Police and the Great Firewall. The last straw came when they mounted a large scale attack on G-mail and a dozen of other companies suspected of harboring the work of the human right activists. Google’s move would be a triumph of truth to power, unfolded in a place where power rarely ceded.

But if you are a cynic, like me, and you think about the move, you would appreciate the savvy-ness behind Google’s judgment. Knowing full well that Beijing won’t back down, knowing that Baidu is the biggest search engine in China, owning more than twice the market share of Google, knowing that becoming the number one would not be feasible in the short term, not without damaging the credibility elsewhere, how about a victory by retreating?

This is the Sun-Tzu’s Art of War stuff. By walking away, Google looked good and China look bad. The optimists around the world would throw rings and rings of flower at its office door. It is a public relation move that would benefit Google’s Do No Evil slogan. They walk out of this looking less like a soulless monopoly the European government starting to accuse.