The Price Of Doing Business - To Censor Or Not To Censor

400 million internet users - that's more than the combined population of the United States.

Where else but China.

Technology firms are falling head over heels in getting their business set up there.

And why not?

No where else in the world today will you see such explosive growth in technology use - not in the Uniteds States, not in Europe, nor in any other country.

Where else but China.

That being said, doing business in China means having to contend with a country that sees everything as a potential threat to its communist status quo.

This Google found when it entered the internet market 4 years ago. The price of doing business in the country was for it to censure its offerings so anything that is deemed by Beijing to be offensive (to their power status) and pornographic is blacked out.

Surprising? Not really. It is still a police state after all depsite the mellowed down rhetoric and seemingly capitalistic flair.

Not surprising also was the criticism that google was all for monetary gains at the expense of freedom of the internet and the company's own "Don't Be Evil" motto.

So with the exit of Google from China they are back to how it was before, with access to Google.com open to everyone but with the censorship done by the Chinese government instead of by Google itself.

A laudable move. Something that many human rights groups see as a something that can highlight China's human rights record.

That being said as a business that does business in another country it is only right that they follow the rules and regulations set forth by that country.

It's normal business sense. The thing is it is harder now for business to simply pack up and leave just because they don't like a country's policies. Let me rephrase that - it is easy for them to do that when it is a poor country that does not have much of a clout.

It is very different when it is a country the size of China with its huge number of customers. Nowadays when a company leaves there are a couple more waiting to get in to replace you.

What is yet to be seen would be the long term effects of this action from the business standpoint and the political standpoint.

Financially of course Google risk losing on the millions the internet in China can potentially bring.

Politically it has become part of the battle of wills between Beijing and Washington D.C.

And China has already started the heavy-handed approach to counter Google's move.

Chinese state media has launched articles attacking the "politicization" of Google and of it acting as a foreign policy arm of the U.S. government.

Ron Diebert, co-founder of the OpenNet Initiative, has said that China's next move may not be to just block access to Google but to go a step further by blocking all outside search engines from accessing Web information in China.

"If such a radical measure happens, that would have major implications for cyberspace as a whole," he said. "It would point to a more regionalized Internet" and perhaps embolden countries like Iran to follow suit."

If that were the case, the battle for freedom of the internet would bump up against the will of the governments.

In this kind of war there will be victims and definitely no winners. What the outcome will be is anybody's guess.

As of now China is winning; Google has backed away. But it doesn't mean it will end here with just this.

A clash is in the horizon. As other's would say "It's inevitable."