Remember all of the human rights high-fivery over Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) threat to leave China if it is forced to continue to censor its results?
"Something should happen soon," CEO Eric Schmidt told reporters yesterday, acknowledging that officials from China and Google executives are in negotiations.
I think Schmidt rocks, but I'm going to have to call his bluff on this one. Under what scenario do you see China agreeing to Google's demands? Under what scenario do you see Google pulling out of the world's most populous nation?
I took a comical stab at what these negotiations must be going like, and I'm quite frankly surprised to hear Schmidt point to a quick resolution.
Right now, China is a small market in terms of revenue. Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) is the runaway market leader, and the $651.6 million in revenue it recorded last year is less than 3% of the $23.7 billion that Google scored on its top line last year. Because Google's market share in China is roughly half of Baidu's slice, leaving China wouldn't affect Big G's results in the near term.
However, this isn't about the near term. The world's leading search engine knows that China's economy is improving at a heady pace. Baidu posted 40% revenue growth for its latest quarter, and even real-world advertising networks AirMedia (Nasdaq: AMCN) and VisionChina (Nasdaq: VISN) posted double-digit top-line gains for 2009. Google has a chance to cash in on China as its citizens accumulate wealth and advertisers spend more to reach them. It's not as if Google can leave and come back in a few years as if nothing had happened.
Google has some leverage here, but it's not much. Just as China may be disgraced globally if Google leaves, it may be a better resolution than to be embarrassed globally if it lets Google get its way. Why should China bow to Google's demands, instead of protecting its homegrown engines Baidu and Sohu.com's (Nasdaq: SOHU) Sogou?
Maybe Schmidt is simply feeling the pressure from the activists who hoisted Google onto their shoulders earlier this year. It has been two months since Google took a stand in China, and nothing has changed. Was it just lip service?
Those four words -- "something should happen soon" -- are timely, yet also sorely open-ended. Google isn't leaving China. China isn't going to let Google have its way.
The only thing that will happen soon -- sadly -- is nothing.
