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Chinese Sites Band Together To Counter Google
egoff writes "The China Search Alliance is a coalition of over 200 Chinese internet portals that have joined together to try to capture the Chinese search market before Google can "invade." Started by China.com.cn, an official government portal, the CSA has now expanded to include mainly commercial, non-governmental, Chinese sites. According to Guangzhou-based New Express News, Google has already approached several Chinese firms about forming a partnership. Being that it started in the government, this looks like a tool for greater control while appearing to be in open competition with Google."
You're only going to see what the government wants you to see.
It is their country. They can do what they want really. If they want to disallow the usage of google even, that IS their right.
:).
We also have the right never to use their search engines.
Aren't rights wonderful? Eventually they'll become more capitalistic. By allowing them to create their own technologies to do so we allow them to create superior products theoretically...and if they have a superior search engine eventually, they'll want to sell it to americans. Capitalism keeps the world going round and round..that or Newton's law of universal gravitation...not sure which
-gabe
Now that Google has a serious competitor (due to the enormous population of China), it will try to improve to compete fairly. So will the China search system.
As much as I like Google, it has a monopoly on non-suckiness of search engines. If China's search can compete, unfairly or fairly, it won't be a mere arms race - only good can come of this.
This is a good thing for everyone.
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
If they want to beat Google as a fast, lightweight, and powerful search tool, they probably should kill those Flash banner ads...
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
The Slant
I'm theorizing that, if the Chinese government indeed builds a search portal that can compete with Google, their next step will be to keep Google's spiders from traversing the Chinese networks. This would cripple Google's ability to grow and update, and knock them out of the running.
This is good news for the consumers of course. With more people researching better search technologies, like this Chinese Search Alliance, like Yahoo announced a couple of days ago about trying to better it's search engine, and Microsoft trying to get into the search market, the products are only going to get better (*hopefully*).
But there is no substitute for now - Google rocks! I especially love Google Labs.
However, nobody knew that the Communist government of China, just as nimble as it was repressive, would be able to exploit its immense pool of cheap labor to remain a powerful force through the dawn of the 21st century.
But now we are seeing that power crumble. As Altavista, Lycos, and Yahoo realized in the late 1990s, it is impossible to become the best search engine portal just by becoming the biggest. Google brought us good results, minimal pages that weren't influenced by bribery or (in most cases) manipulation, and quick easy searches. Is that something that China's 200 competing portals will be able to bring to the customer's desktop? I think not.
Don't ever forget that the only possible outcome of a compromise is a poor product. Too many cooks in the kitchen inevitably produce something that none of them like and nobody will eat. Good design needs to be engineered into the product, not cobbled on at the end. And that is why Google will win this battle and beat Chinese Communism at its own game. And for that we will owe them much gratitude.
If you believe that, you have no rights. If you believe that there are no limits to government, obviously anything the government wants to do is OK with you. It's no more true than any two people have the right to kill a third. You have natural rights, one of which is to say and read what you will. It takes positive government action to interfere with that right. Because all governments are supported by the efforts of their people, those that violate natural rights are considered abusive wasters of resources. Abusive governments only exist when you let them and you would let them.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
because the Chinese communists don't care to have any entity in their country that can reach masses of people without their communist stamp of approval. Hell they can just chop off access to Google through the great Chinese Firewall.
This need to put the communist stamp of approval on everything exists everywhere. For instance Catholics in China cannot be loyal to the Pope, he qualifies as a foreign entity. Plus we have already seen the Chinese kidnap the Tibetan Panchen Lama with hopes of replacing him with one that will be sympathetic to the Communists.
Speaking of the Chinese and competition one must be skeptical since the government will always put those things that aren't officially sanctioned in a position of disadvantage (blocking it access for example)
By contrast, look at our American society in the West. We have debated the issue of the government controlling the Internet.
So it's ok for the RIAA and other corporations to control the internet but not the government?
You really shouldn't stereotype people, who knows, one day someone might stereotype you...
Moderators, Moderators, do your worst. After all, I'm only an Anonomous Corward..
The Chinese are over-represented in our engineering and business schools at our elite universities. Yet, the Chinese are under-represented at meetings of Amnesty International at those very same universities. Why?
US engineering and business schools don't exclusively cater towards engineering and business disciplines. There are other disciplines as well. All you are really discovering is that foreign students tend to study science, engineering and business; not liberal arts and humanities. If you wish to be fair you need to determine how many US engineering, science, and business majors show up at Amnesty Internation meetings. The answer is probably not many, irregardless of nationality. Face it, some majors are less demanding and offer more free time. Don't misunderstand, I'm not putting these majors down. I took senior level poly sci classes for fun, skipped the prerequisites, enjoyed the classes, and received A's and B's. These classes were stress relief from my advanced math and computer science classes.
I typed "Falun Gong", pressed enter, and got lots of results. All of them negative towards the Falun Gong Cult, mind you.
Hit number 4: "The Falun Gong cult misled me into killing my beloved uncle"
I repeated the test with Google, only this time, I searched for "Scientology". Pressing "Feeling Lucky" brought me right to the CoS homepage (and not to xenu.net, like it used to do).
So, to sum up:
Seems to me that even though the tools for censorship are quite different, they are in place indeed.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
beeing a tad more leftwing than most others
I wouldn't describe them as "leftwing"; a better word would be "totalitarian", but since Mao's death it's really just been "authoritarian" with strong socialist underpinnings. It hasn't been a true communist state for some time (though it's nowhere near to being a proper capitalist state).
From what I've read and been told (college history class, etc.), the attitude of the Chinese government can be oversimplified as one of extreme distrust over any mass medium or mass *movement* that they don't control. Tiannamen is the most famous case, but the Falun Gong and indeed any sort of religion are persecuted because they represent popular organization that isn't managed by the government. When Zhou Enlai (China's most famous Communist leader other than Mao - very interesting person) died, many people were genuinely distraught and held a spontaneous wake in Beijing. The government broke it up, because it wasn't under their control. I think the Internet appears the same way to them.
That's just my opinion, but a Chinese coworker thought it made sense when I explained it to him.
seriously. The guy talks about how "different" the Chinese are and then talks about guys taking advantage of situations to become wealthy. Oh, that never happens in this ethical capitalisitic society! In capitalism, man exploits man, in communism, it's the other way around!
What the fuck is wrong with the mods! Damn! How can someone say "Chinese have no ethics" and be called "informative" and not "flamebait"?!
Yes, there are some differences between the core of the cultures and values of China, US, India, Eastern Europe, Middle East, etc. But somehow, "those" guys lack ethics, but people here are superior. what bullshit!
So Chinese in Hong Kong rather unite with China then be with Britain or independent, so what?! How is Chinese pride so different from Arab pride, religious pride or the ridiculous god damn amount of "patriotism" in the US? Where we can't question the president in the time of war without being labeled traitor by these "kind-hearted and naive" folks. Patriotism, nationalism, sexism, racism, etc. are all stupid in my opinion. All groups of people are equally stupid.
It's one thing to demonize the Chinese government. But quite another to insult the race and culture of all Chinese people.
You are further evidence of western arrogance and ignorance people talk about. But I won't make the assumptions that such a stereotype is valid nor will I prejudge other westerners on it.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
as a chinese, i do somewhat agree that chinese tend to be a bit less on the moral side, as in, they still throw rubbish around in public places and don't flush the toilet.
:P ) , and let's not forget the whole fiasco about auctioning chinese antiques stolen during colonism times instead of returning it to the rightful owners. It's not like the Western World is all nice ...
but that does not mean America or Britain or the Western world is any better culturally, China had the whole communist thing going on and they've only recently under the leadership of Deng Xiao Ping start to come out of their shell.
give them time, it took a few hundred years for brits and americans to realise how wrong slavery was, how wrong colonism was. china has gotten a lot better in recent years already !
about the Amnesty International, i feel most chinese do not join groups like that because their parents wouldn't like it. A lot of chinese kids are in engineering and science simply because it's supposed to be a prestigious field for chinese, not because they love it.
Art/dance/sociology etc. are regarded as unstable income, so activities that don't bring in stable income are discouraged. In chinese families the children are supposed to take care of their parents when they're old, if your working income is bad or youre off in Africa doing humanitarian stuff, how are you supposed to take care of your parents? Western culture tends to place importance on self...do what YOU like, while chinese cultures(and most eastern cultures) tends to emphasize do whats right for the family.
as for suppoting HK and tibet..well tibet is kind of question mark to me but for Hong Kong , yes i do agree return to China because the British took it from China in the first place(during opium wars i believe ? ) and after the colonism era ended the british agreed to give it back.
btw , the Chinese Emperor's throne is sitting in London while the forbidden city is empty ( guess who took all the stuff ? pfftt
A more serious problem is that if there _is_ a search engine with good coverage of China, the Chinese government will find it easier to locate and kill any web sites with politically incorrect information.
(Oh, and the last time the local Amnesty group had a publicity table, there were Chinese people working there....)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks