I have the impression that their advertising and cloud businesses are just not welcome in China, and if that's correct then it's all practicality and no ethics involved.
All the market analyst comments I've read about moving manufacturing of phones focused on cost and supply chain reliability with no mention of ethics either.
If I remember, the reason they were not welcome was that they didn't want to censor stuff and hand everything over to the CCP.
But I see the sibling post, I think the management probably wanted to get in here, but apparently the internal uproar made them cancel it[1]. I have yet to see an uproar from apple employees over using slave labour to make their phones or handing data over to the CCP.
Google are not saints, but I prefer the path they took. Even if it was bumpy.
You don't create a censored Chinese search engine to try to break back into the Chinese market if there is any truth to the notion that management is staying out of China over ethical concerns.
> Google’s Chinese search app would have reportedly complied with demands to remove content that the government ruled sensitive and linked users’ searches to their personal phone numbers.
All the market analyst comments I've read about moving manufacturing of phones focused on cost and supply chain reliability with no mention of ethics either.