Steps 1 & 2: Read the case. Take notes.
Chinese language search engine launched in china in 2006 (pg.37)
Company was private until 2004, Page and Brin decided to conduct a Dutch auction
Dutch auction was designed to “democratize IPO share allocation and afford companies and early investors the best price”( pg. 40)
Company 5,680 employees were scattered throughout the world (pg. 41)
2005 positive cash flow of 3.45 billion (pg.41)
Revenue of $6.14 billion (pg.41)
Google motto “don’t be evil” (pg. 42)
“With a population of 1.6 billion people, China had become an attractive market for many U.S.-based multinationals” (pg. 44)
Chinese internet controlled through both governmental and censorship (self-Censorship) (pg. 47)
Chinese government was able to monitor all foreign internet traffic by routers (URLs) (pg. 47)
In 2002, google.com was inaccessible for 2 weeks, it was slow and temperamental for all Chinese users (pg. 53)
Google was losing market share to Baidu, yahoo, an Microsoft (pg.53)
Step 3: Write the problem statement.
Tom Maclean, the director of International Business for Google Inc. was facing whether to continue google.cn in China or just leave it as google.com, even though google.com would be a slower search engine in china and may not give Google Inc. any profit. Maclean has to address this problem within 24 hours or Google Inc. may lose profits from China.
Step 4: State an objective for the manager involved.
Short-term objectives:
1. To- Rebuild reputation that was damaged
2. To- maintain both search engines
Long-term objectives:
1. To- Google should continue with their mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful
2. To – create better methods to make google.cn filter the Chinese information
Step 5: Identify and rank order critical issues related to the problem. Here lies the heart of the case; if you miss a critical