They could always do what Google did and abandon China.
Either you are successful, and then the rules are changed to disadvantage you further. Or you're unsuccessful because of the rules. Lose / lose.
They already demonstrated they cannot compete without help from the government. It's an inferior product that can only succeed because the better competitors are banned. Kind of like iPhone default browser.
Also I'm pretty that Google isn't a nobody in "The East", The East is much more than just mainland China.
[1] https://www.slideshare.net/anksiitk/googles-negotiations-wit...
The two companies are very different.
Apple is not aspirational in China today: they are already making a lot of money there. Leaving China would cause an immediate shock to its stock price as well as a huge cut in actual profits.
I was an engineer on Google's web search indexing system for 4 years (including the Aurora attack), leaving shortly before Google's China exit. I listened to several talks by the head of Google China, who came from Baidu.
Even before the Aurora attack, as a matter of national pride, we knew the very best Google could hope for was 30% or 40% market share in China. Even France funded one or two attempts at a Francophone Google killer. I can't imagine the U.S. looking at a dominant search company based out of anywhere except North America (or perhaps the Anglophone Five Eyes) and not butting up significant nationalistic barriers.
Google was hoping to make profits, but they knew they would never be dominant. This made their exit much easier.
If Google was serious about China, they would have had a more obscure non-Google-branded name for their Chinese joint venture and would have branded their front page much differently. The reasons would take a large post, but Chinese web pages tend to be much more "busy", and Chinese language searches have a much higher percentage of "navigational searches". (If you search for [Facebook], you're almost certainly just trying to just get a link to facebook.com, and are basically using the search engine like a bookmark page.) I understand Google's need for a consistent U.I., but they really should have had a non-Google-branded U.I. that was better suited to the Chinese market.
Their phones are made many places. Lately in Taiwan and Korea.
There's an ancient Chinese story where a farmer criticizes an official who exiled himself because the government is corrupt. As the fisherman departs he sings: "when the water of the river is clean I wash my hat in the river, when the waters are dirty I wash my feet in the river". What good can the virtuous official do living out in the mountains? Instead you should adapt your participation to the conditions of the playing field.
I don't see how they could have stayed in China and not been involved in things that are truly evil. When the government phones you up and tells you to hide search results related to babies dying from diluted baby formula (yes, this happened), could you in good conscience tell one of your engineers to add that filter? How could a company like Google possibly retain good people when they have to ask them to do the bidding of such an evil government?
Google could spend eternity fighting this until the government changes (ha), or pull our and upload their value of organizing the world's information without* censorship.
In your eyes, they are more evil for not bringing their products to China, in their eyes, they are more noble for making their anti-censorship* stance loud and clear.
Apple in this case can be viewed as doing good (assuming having an iPhone and access to Apple's stuff is good for people) or as putting money over censorship values. It's all about which angle to look from.
The world isn't hurting for search engines, mail providers or luxury smartphones. Maybe Google decided that fighting the Chinese government is not the right battle and allowing direct censorship is not a value they are willing to compromise on even if it means losing access to several millions of users
*Yeah, filter bubbles exist and Google controlling search results and ads can be viewed as evil but that's a different conversation.
Here's some factors that could be a guide: What do the citizens themselves want? Is the boycott merely symbolic, or is it linked to other boycotts and pressure across a wide front, so that it is liable to have the desired outcome? Are the boycotters committed to long term pressure, publicity, and engagement with stakeholders in the other country?
Former Google engineer here. There's a subtle but significant semantic difference between "Don't be evil" (the real motto) and "Do no evil" (a confusion between the Hippocratic oath and the Google motto).
What I'm mostly interested in is how you can rationalize doing evil while not considering yourself as being evil. Is it based on the idea that you might do evil unintentionally or that you could be coerced into it? Are there other reasons for the distinction?
Do no evil = "No, we are not going to torture these prisoners of war, period."
Don't be evil = "It's OK to waterboard them a little if they deserve it. Remember, we are the good guys, we're here to help."
(See also: rationale for the My Lai Massacre. Very similar thinking, it's possible to excuse awful things when you're the hero(es) of your own (indoctrinated) narrative.)
One question: do they - Chinese people - even care? It's not exactly "good" - whatever Google could have done in such an environment - if you try to force it on an unwilling crowd.