According to report, Saudi Arabia's telecommunications regulator said on Tuesday it will allow BlackBerry messenger services to continue in the kingdom as some of its regulatory requirements have been satisfied.  

Although just last week, the co-CEO of RIM lashed out at governments seeking to ban his company’s BlackBerry phones, and RIM said in a statement last Tuesday it can’t give access to encrypted data and hasn’t previously given any one government special treatment, the conflict was soon resolved over the weekend.

It was not a surprise that the agreement was reached quickly, because RIM has been even able to satisfy the strict security demands of Russia and China. China requires all internet and telecom companies to report on and even censor their customers’ communications. The launch of BlackBerry in China was forced to delay by almost a year until RIM satisfied the government’s security requirements. RIM refuses to discuss the content of its negotiations with Chinese regulators. Likewise, the details of the negotiation between RIM and Saudi Arabia were not, and probably will never be revealed.

While RIM was coping with the Middle East crisis, another technology giant, Google, saw a silver line looming on its Chinese market. Google broke up with China in January over internet censorship, and since March 22 Google has stopped censoring search services and redirected mainland China users to goolge.com.hk (Google Hong Kong), where uncensored search is offered. When Google’s pulled out search service from mainland China, many believed that the relation between the search giant and the security-obsessed country could hardly be restored in a short run.

However, to many people’s surprise, in early July Google got its Internet Content Provider (ICP) license, which is a must for operating internet business in China, renewed from the Chinese government, although the renewal comes with the provision that Google’s contract would be revisited annually. What’s more, Google has begun extensive recruitment in China. All these are signs that the strained relation between the search giant and the most populous country is being restored. Again, what’s behind this ease of tension is unknown, just like the unknown content of the agreement between RIM and China, and RIM and Saudi Arabia.

Now the question is: how much is Google going to compromise with Chinese government? One thing for sure is that the Chinese government will not loosen its censorship. In fact, there are signs that the internet censorship is getting stricter. So it really depends on how badly Google wants this market. Unlike RIM who’s loosing the market share in North America and eagerly expanding business overseas (RIM’s sales outside North America account for 40% of its revenue), Google China explains less than 2% of Google’s global revenue, and search service is not the only revenue source for Google China.  The truth is that for most companies, profit trumps corporate ethics. When a company is eager for money, ethics concedes to profit; when there’s only small profit or no profit in sight, the company can claim that its ethics trumps profit. That is why RIM and Google have behaved differently.

Now that RIM has compromised, will Google compromise soon?

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