1. When it began operations in China in 2006, Google had agreed to have the search engine Google.cn censor information. Did Google have an ethical right to renege on its agreement in 2010 by directing its Chinese users to the uncensored search engine Google.com.hk?
2. Google derives its revenue by selling advertising. Should Google be concerned about the type of information that users access through the various Google search engines?
3. Do for-profit businesses, such as Google, have an ethical responsibility to lobby for human rights and against censorship in the various countries in which they have commercial operations?
4. After the December 2009 attack, Google enhanced the security for all its users. Does Google have any additional ethical responsibility to human rights activists to provide them with even more sophisticated architectural and infrastructure improvements so that their specific Gmail accounts cannot be compromised?

Google is the world’s largest search engine. In 2009, it had approximately 400 million web users, of which 200 million are located in the United States. Its global revenue from advertising amounted to $23.6 billion. China is the world’s third-largest economy. China has a potential 384 million Internet users and advertising revenue from China is estimated to be $15 to $20 billion annually. In 2006, Google began operations in China as Google.cn. Part of the agreement with the Chinese government was that the Google.cn search engine would censor information from topics that had been banned by the Chinese government.