1. What philosophical principle did Google's managers adopt when deciding that the benefits of operating in China outweighed the costs?
Ans. When it comes to the benefits outweighing the cost in China, apparently, Google’s managers adopt utilitarian approach, because according to utilitarian philosophy, “it focuses attention on the need to weigh carefully all of the social benefits and costs of a business action and to pursue only those actions where the benefits outweigh the costs” . For Google, they have their own legitimate and logical reasons why they should keep Google.cm with the censorship by Chinese government. Without a doubt, China is a huge promising and potential Internet market in the world, where Google can make a great number of profits. Also, Google top managers explain that it’s better to give Chinese users limited information than to give nothing. What’s more, Google managers argue that Google is the only searching engine in China telling users that their searching has been censored because of the government regulations. It seems the Google’s argument sounds very convincing and reasonable, but from my perspective, Google is absolutely a utilitarian who only cares about their benefits more than cost.
In addition, Google managers adopted the straw man approaches, including the Friedman doctrine, cultural relativism, naive immorality, and righteous moralist as well. As mentioned previously, Google’s objective is to allow people to access all of the information in the world. However, in order to enter China market, Google has to follow Chinese regulations, which some political sensitive topics should be blocked. After weighing benefits and costs, Google agreed with Chinese regulations while entering China in 2006, which is an example of the Friedman