If the protesting employees think they're winning, they're patently wrong. One hiccup in the market, one quarter of slow growth is all it takes for Google to remove obstacles to it's goal.
As for shareholders & wall street, if Google continues to display impotence at capturing obvious opportunities, money will move elsewhere, & said slow growth of stock will happen
What it needs is ad publishers' money. As long as it has a wide reach, the money will flow. Having a bad public image would only reduce this flow, if anything.
I think that the Google's most potent fear is that ad budgets of companies will decrease, or re-structure and go to other channels, and the source of 99% of Google's income will start to dry up. They have no replacement for it, and try to hedge against its loss incessantly and desperately (and without much success).
There is no point talking about controlling the world's temperature if every exec in a corporation is programmed by the stock market to robotically keep things mindlessly scaling.
But from experience I also know the exec class when under attack are well trained to just get defensive/batton down the hatches and do nothing. They will change their minds only when everyone is on the same page solution wise.
So rather than just be satisfied with the Us Vs them narratives, focus has to shift to solutions. The Chinese have to be pushed to have these discussions in the open about what they want and why it's good.
Google will, however, need to talk to curious investors on missing billion dollar opportunities while Bing goes about serving search without a fuss in China
They are clearly giving Google a list or a process to follow. Make them own it. Publish the rules and regulations and let the world and Chinese people see it. Let people also see what Microsoft or whoever else is happy to accept.
They aren't pulling these censored words and processes out of their ass. They have methods to decide what causes "social instability" or whatever. Just as pressure is mounting on Facebook Twitter and YouTube framing similar rules in an ivory tower, the pressure has mount on the Chinese too. Their own people will increasingly have things to say about it.
Everyone benefits if the process is pushed to be transparent esp now since the unintended consequences of big tech on society are becoming more and more clearer.
Why is it manufactured?