Great excitement today as Google announces it may no longer be able to offer online search services in China. This could turn out to be an opening gambit in an extended negotiation. Or it may signal a rapid exit for the internet giant from one of the world’s most important markets.
Google says it is no longer happy to limit Chinese users’ access to certain internet sites, as it had previously (and controversially) agreed to do. My colleague Richard Waters has spotted that Google’s public statement does not necessarily mean that the company will cease operating in China. But the company, after apparently being concerned for some time, has felt forced to speak out after cyber-hackers started trawling through some Chinese gmail accounts.
I expect there will be relief at Google HQ that the company is getting back on the front foot (as they don’t say in California) with its relationship with China. This is good PR. And it may prevent critics from using a tired but still effective attack line against the company: that its dealings with China have compromised its declared aim - ”don’t be evil”.
Mission statements can be dangerous things. It is hard to pitch them right. They can be banal and cliché-ridden, to the point of meaninglessness (is anybody actually against quality, value, service, and so on?). Or they can over-claim, setting yourself up for failure and sarcastic criticism.
Best to keep them short, simple, and more or less unarguable - Procter and Gamble say that they are “touching lives, improving life” – if you have to have them at all.
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Lucy Kellaway, FT columnist and associate editor, offers her solution to your workplace problems in a column in the Financial Times. In the 
