Stay true to your principles and you will move mountains. If this isn’t a Chinese proverb it sounds like it should be and Google’s decision to finally challenge the Chinese government’s censorship requirements, even if it means pulling out of the world’s largest nation which already has an online population greater than the entire population of the United States, shows that principles, even in the corporate search engine world, come with lines which should not be crossed.

Google entered China in 2006 with an agreement to abide by Chinese censorship laws and apply certain filters to its Google.cn search engine for specific search terms. Yesterday, David Drummond, Google’s top lawyer, wrote in a blog posting: “The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences.

“As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.”

He writes: “We have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.”

Google’s decision to challenge the State, whichever way it pans out for the search giant, is likely to gain it kudos and add to its bottom line either through increased loyalty and shrinking costs (if it pulls out of the Chinese market) or an increased share of the Chinese market as it becomes the first uncensored search engine to operate in the Chinese market.

So the action, though significant on the moral front, is a little disingenuous in that it is more self-serving than it, at first, appears. After three years in the Chinese market Google is tired of playing by rules it does not make and which seem to change according to political whims, pulling out makes sense and, should the Chinese government back down, it’ll be a blow for freedom dealt by a giant of the corporate world.

This also should be a constant, guiding theme in the way you SEO your site. Yes, you are there to make money and yes business is business but it is only by combining business with ethics that we can move forward and actually create the kind of world we want to live in.

David Amerland is the author of the Search Engine Optimization book: SEO Help: 20 steps to get your website to Google's #1 page published by New Line Publishing and available to buy from Amazon.com and any quality bookshop. The ebook version of the book is available for Amazon Kindle as well as  Mobipocket, smartphone and Sony eBook Reader formats and available to purchase from any quality ebook retailer. You can also purchase it directly from this website. He masterminds winning SEO strategies for complex online business and helps the average webmaster get their site to the position it deserves. David has been instrumental in taking websites to the top of Google's first page in a way that has kept them there year after year. If you would like David to work on one of your SEO projects drop us a line with your request.