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China Malware War Gets Personal

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the fight-to-the-death dept.

bcaulfield writes to tell us Zhou Hongyi has filed a 3.6 million yuan ($450,000) defamation suit against Yahoo China. Hongyi, the former president of Yahoo China, filed his suit in response to comments made in a recent Yahoo press conference accusing him of unethical business practices. From the article: "A rift between Mr. Zhou and Yahoo China has been developing since before his departure from Yahoo last year, just prior to Alibaba's takeover of Yahoo's China operations. Mr. Zhou doled out generous bonuses to Yahoo employees in a ploy his detractors derided as a naked purchase of loyalties. Mr. Zhou defended the disbursements. 'Many of these people were longtime Yahoo employees, and they were under no obligation to follow me,' he said. 'It was my money to do with as I wanted.'" Update 08/20/2006 15:01 GMT by SM: Corrected the currency for the suit.

8 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. $450,000 suit, not $3.6m by tgtanman · · Score: 5, Informative

    From TFA: "Zhou Hongyi, controversial Internet entrepreneur and former president of Yahoo China, has filed a 3.6-million yuan ($450,000) defamation suit against his former employer in Beijing's Second Intermediary People's Court."

  2. New tag time by Monkeys!!! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've tagged this article incorrect because of the summary. So much wrong, so little right.

  3. malware? by postmortem · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Article itself contains some details about rampant malware in China. This is in my opinion interesting part:

    "There's only one browser address bar, and we were all competing for that space," he said. "We all tried to uninstall one another. And we all just went further and further down that road. If you can protect your software from being uninstalled by a competitor's, then imagine how hard it is for a regular user to uninstall."

    So, in some way every browser toolbar is a malware.
    1. Re:malware? by Harmonious+Botch · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So, in some way every browser toolbar is a malware.

      Not quite. The most one can conclude is that every toolbar writer had an incentive to make his toolbar malware. Some, presumably, resisted the temptation. This guy did not. And his argument ( 'everybody else was doing it' ) was something that most of us learned was an insuficient excuse back in kindergarten.

    2. Re:malware? by kfg · · Score: 4, Funny

      And his argument ( 'everybody else was doing it' ) was something that most of us learned was an insuficient excuse back in kindergarten.

      And so I quit school.

      KFG

    3. Re:malware? by Skidge · · Score: 4, Insightful
      This is solved nicely in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 through drop-down menu list.

      I may be wrong, but doesn't Firefox get a kickback for sending people to Google? If they do, that doesn't seem all that ethically different from Google's own toolbar, malware-wise. If not, I apologize for the misinformation. :)
  4. Damn them all! by slack-fu · · Score: 5, Funny
    "A rift between Mr. Zhou and Yahoo China has been developing since before his departure from Yahoo last year, just prior to Alibaba's takeover of Yahoo's China operations.
    Damn that Alibaba and his 40 thieves!
  5. this is ironic by deconvolution · · Score: 4, Informative

    Zhou Hongyi was often titled "The father of Chinese malware" ......

    The 3721 assistant plugin he created is totally a nightmare, especially in a workgroup environment. I think the only motivation of this lawsuit is about money.