Entering the Chinese market also lends prestige to the censoring regime (e.g. "all the companies of the world submit to our demands"), and also makes those demands seem more reasonable.
> Rather Google should be using its influence to challenge censorship from the inside after it reenters the Chinese market.
The CCP doesn't care at all about Google's challenges to it. Either Google complies totally, or it's out. The CCP doesn't need Google, and they probably would rather people use Baidu anyway.
The ideal option that we'd all love to see, of the Chinese people given full and free access to uncensored and unmonitored information, is unlikely to be on offer any time soon. Refusing to meet the Communist Party's demands has only meant that control of information by the Party goes unchallenged in any way. Search is not something so unique and powerful that only specially smart Westerners can do it. As a result, holding out for this ideal is equivalent to actively advocating for the status quo.
That's the question at hand. Do we prefer posturing in the form of a moral stand that hurts people and strengthens the Communist Party or do we accept that other options might be worth considering?
Pleasing Soviet Union never help.