ABSTRACT
In 2005, Google, Inc.'s top management team struggled to decide if the company should enter China—and, if so, how. On July 15, 2005, Google's board of directors gathered for its regular meeting at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California. In 2005, Google had more than 4,000 full-time employees and earned $1.5 billion on $6.1 billion in revenue; its market capitalization that year exceeded $80 billion. In 2005, Google's business model was based almost entirely on revenue from paid advertising. Google declared on its website that its mission was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". China, the nation that posed a "serious concern" for Google's board of directors and a potential challenge to the company's commitment to "do no evil" was one of the most economically dynamic countries in the world. Intellectuals and activists around the world worked both to gauge the extent of Internet censorship in China and to circumvent it.
