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Microsoft Considers Pulling Out of China
icefaerie writes to let us know that a senior executive for Microsoft has said the firm could pull out of non-democratic countries such as China. From the article: "Fred Tipson, senior policy counsel for the computer giant, said concerns over the repressive regime might force it to reconsider its business in China. 'Things are getting bad... and perhaps we have to look again at our presence there,' he told a conference in Athens."
Really, I don't know why any US companies can do business with China. China does terrible, horrible things to their people. We're talking on par with Cuba, Iraq, and many rogue African and S. American countries. Yet for some reason we seem to turn a blind eye to it. I've never understood it. I'm sure it's all political because the US couldn't survive as a country without China. It's easy to say no to cuba, it's much more difficult to say no to a country which supplies over 90% of our furniture and large chunks of our circuit boards.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Talk is cheap.
A one-liner from a senior policy counsel isn't exactly a firm commitment.
Having worked for Microsoft in Redmond + China for 2 years, this is complete nonsense. Anyone who has worked at a large company will know that titles such as "senior policy counsel" mean nothing. Especially for something as strategic as China, if it doesn't come from Ballmer or Gates, it doesn't mean anything. The current China GM/VP is Tim Chen and he was personally hired by Ballmer + Gates. China represents very little of Microsoft's revenue today, but it's one of the top 5 long term bets for the company. This was taken completely out of context by the reporter, and I know that the Redmond/Beijing PR + business teams are fratically trying to repair the damage that this statement will cause with Chinese customers and government officials. The "senior policy counsel" won't be fired, but he'll be far more careful when speaking in public...
This article is about MSN and blogs and the like, not their software business. They're considering turning off all of the MSN services to China, rather than succumbing and doing filtering as the government pleases (looking at you Google), and rather than turning over bloggers to the government (looking at you Yahoo).
They know perfectly well they don't any significant software revenue in China, and they're at least open about it inside the company.