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Google Hacked, May Pull Out of China
D H NG writes "Following a sophisticated attack on Google infrastructure originating from China late last year, Google has decided to take 'a new approach' to China. In their investigation, Google found that more than 20 large companies had been infiltrated and dozens of Chinese human rights activists' Gmail accounts had been compromised. Google has decided to 'review the feasibility of [its] business operations in China,' no longer censoring results in Google.cn, and if necessary, to 'shut down Google.cn, and potentially [Google's] offices in China.'"
Couple this with Slashdot's coverage of a Baidu site hacker takeover and the constant claims of a "Don't be evil" violation for following Chinese censorship demands on google.cn... maybe there just isn't any money to be made there without problems that threaten Google's reputation that it cashes in with elsewhere. So much for free trade... this means info-technology war.
Google has been skirting the edge of their "don't be evil" policy with China since the start. If you have to censor your search results, it's not worth the trouble.
I honestly want to know.
What would the impact of Google pulling out of China mean to citizens? How popular was Google, compared to Baidu, Bing, Yahoo, etc. in the Chinese web search space?
My guess: Google stops censoring itself, gaining credibility for its belatedly 'principled' stand against the Chinese government, while sending a message to China that hacking its servers is Not Polite. China predictably steps in to filter the search results using its own mechanisms, relieving Google of the burden. Google gets to keep its advertising revenue, while the users behind the Great Firewall get (at best) the same censorship as before. Now if Google really wants to make a point, with a genuine and serious risk of losing business, how about making google.cn an exclusively SSL site and seeing how fast China blocks it..?
I mean, we wouldn't want to impregnate China, would we?
Similar to the upcoming US election results
We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.
Oh so now they are going to discuss censorship with the Chinese. And they didn't decide to do this before? And it never occurred to them that the intelligence agencies of foreign governments would spy on them?
This all smells of some PR stunt. After investing billions in China and bending over violently for commie murderers, they still got their asses handed to them by Baidu. This is their way of pulling out of a losing market while looking like good guys.
The lesson is simple: Work with evil and evil will still screw you over. It took Google wrong enough to realize this. There's a real temptation to Godwin this with a comparison to Neville Chamberlain. But the result is clear: Google tried to cooperate with China in hope that some good with come of a compromise policy. The end result is that the Chinese still tried to infiltrate Google to serve its censorious, abusive ends.
I don't know how much of my comment history is available at present, but it doesn't seem that long ago that I was commenting that Google is not to be trusted because they are a corporation and they are all about advertising revenue. The fact that they have capitulated to China in the past was reaffirming to my perspective.
But if this story plays out and Google pulls out of China based on the Chinese government's persecution of descenters, opposition and critics, then I have to say that Goggle will actually start changing my mind about them after all. And I have to say, just like many others, changing my mind about something is not particularly easy to do -- but if they do this, I will be PLEASANTLY surprised.
In addition to that, any U.S. company that fails to take a similar approach to dealing with China is simply without balls by comparison.
does a US company do business with regimes with poor human rights records?
specifically, does an internet company help such a government with restrictions on freedoms?
what if the company's motto is "don't be evil"?
score one for human rights
and score one for google's integrity
today is a good day
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.
Clarence Darrow
Translation: "We were cool with doing business with you, even effacing our own corporate values, because your country is a lucrative market. But it wasn't enough for us to be cooperative -- you got in our servers and messed with our stuff. And you know what -- that'll cost us more in our reputation and business costs than you're worth, so goodbye."
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Google had a great reputation with its "Do no evil" motto. And then they went into China and they lost it.
What is worth more to google. A great reputation in the west and no business in China, or a sullied reputation in the west and lousy business in China that may be cut off any day when the government chances its mind? You seem to assume like many others that doing business in China is easy, just follow the rules and you make a profit. But that is not the case. You IP is an open target, the government can change the rules whenever it wants and the local competition is heavily entwined with the state.
That makes for a difficult operating environment. It is indeed a brave move by Google to go against the Wall Street mentality of "a penny today" but long term it might be the wisest move they ever make. At least they are sending a signal that there are limits. It seems that at the end of the crisis, something might be changing. Even the US seems to be considering to tax banks... unthinkable in the past. New firms are starting up that claim they will things different and now google being the first to question the Wall Street wisdom that doing business in China is worth everything.
And as for enormous. China only passed Germany this year in exports. The market really ain't all that large. Large parts of it are dirt poor and the rest works for pennies. India is equal in population size and a lot more open. You don't see everyone bending over backwards for India do you? Wall Street loves China, no meddling human rights to upset things, simple rules. But Wall Street has shown it doesn't know shit.
I am frankly surprised at reading this story. Either we soon will get an update that this guy was fired or Google is very serious about this. Because somewhere in China, someone just fainted. The Chinese government does NOT want google to just disappear because of its actions, the average Chinese person doesn't really believe that censorship affects him/her personally. It is just for troublemakers. When google goes (and with that youtube etc etc) it will be noticed far more clearly then some dissident being locked up.
Who knew, Google might actually life up to its motto "Do no evil". Wonder what other companies will do... If Google follows-up on this, MS apologists lost a major piece of ammunition.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm ready to stop buying Chinese, if possible. I've already stopped buying products manufactured in China if they are for my daughter. Anyone want to start on-shore manufacturing? Seems like German toys and French health products are the only alternative.
You can check to see who've logged into your Gmail account by checking the last account activity link at the bottom of your Gmail screen.
it does not override, modify, or negate basic human rights
if there is in fact as aspect of culture, any culture, western, indian, russian, whatever, that is an aborgation of human rights, then it is up to you, if you consider yourself someone with a sense of principles, to oppose it
i'm not saying that the chinese should eat mcdonalds, i'm saying- hell, the CHINESE are saying (as in, the actual chinese, not their autocrats) that the chinese deserve HUMAN RIGHTS
there's a reason its called HUMAN rights, and not american rights or western rights
you are truly one deluded fool if cultural differences excuses gross violations of basic human dignity
what is your take on clitorectomies? is that west african tradition something to be respected, or fought? if you fight it, are you simply a cultural imperialist, an ethnocentric westerner?
do you believe that if you cross the straights of bosporus or the straights of gibraltar or the rio grande and *snap*, magic! human beings are fundamentally different and gross violations of human rights should be respected as quaint local custom?
i am not an american. i am a human being. it is in fact, those who think of themselves as american first, and a human second, or a brazilian first, and a human second, or a muslim first, and a human second, or whatever, that is the source of all the suffering in this world. what random arbitrary tribal boundary you are born within is a far, far secondary consideration to your allegiance to your HUMANITY. or, at least it should be. too many in this world have that backwards, and they are the source of our problems
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Which in turn means that there might be something else at play.
Reading some of the news coming out about hackers in China, I get the impression that there might be unofficial sanctioning or sponsorship by the government of some Chinese hacker groups.
It also strikes me as a little off that a company announces it 'might' pull out of a country. Usually, these decisions are made internally and press conferences are called to either announce or deny that something is going to happen. If you are a company like Google, you don't openly call the government for hacking and spying. I wonder if this is Google telling the government that it won't put up with their shit?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=tianamen+square+massacre currently gives 1,350,000 results. If it's also doing that on the other side of the great firewall of China, then they have already done something BIG.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Step #1: Visit www.baidu.com.
Step #2: Search for Google or blogspot.com. Note that both work.
Step #3: Now search for google.blogspot.com.
Step #4: Enjoy your Baidu lockout. You should be able to search again in 5-10 minutes, I haven't timed the duration exactly.
Google has a tangibles option. They could start not emphasizing ads as much as actually selling stuff themselves, ie a super amazon effort. They are starting now with their cellphone, this branching out..and there is nothing stopping them from going on to all sorts of other tangible products, which would make their advertising just a force multiplier instead of an economic end game, even if all they started out with was a profit sharing deal with ad buyers..
Google appears to be a proud protector of the gmail accounts of China's Human Rights activists, when it says that "Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.".
Is this the same Google which Hands over IP addresses of activists to Indian Police ?
What about Google Sets Censorship Precedent In India ?
Mumbai Cyber Sleuths are a law unto themselves, ordering Americans around: Mumbai Police Order American to delete Cartoon
Why does Google co-operate so tamely with Mumbai Cyber police ? Why did Google hand over IPs in 2007 entangling an innocent man in the Police web ?
And yet talk of Human Rights in China ? Don't the Indians have Human Rights too ?
It was surely an inside job. Google needs employees in China to manage the operations there. Even if you keep them under control, or if you send trusted employees from overseas, it's a huge hazard. The government in China has a really tight control of the population, and everyone is afraid of the government. I'm pretty sure it was easy for an insider to leak information, and I'm also pretty sure that the government isn't just buying the "yes, we will comply with your filter" response from Google, and is not only constantly monitoring search results, but also getting inside information about how things are being handled.
If you don't make a huge profit out of China, the rest of the world complains about the censorship you agreed to apply at search results, and you are risking trade secrets and being harassed, then the Chinese market isn't so interesting anymore.
If I were in Google's situation, I would gladly let those 300 millions a year go, and just leave China.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I am a Chinese student.
Thanks to Internet, we Chinese ppl these days could get these information easier than before. We know about these things like Tienanmen event, etc. Well we have some places to share these information(p2p rocks, doesnt it?) As far as i know, most student in my college have knowledges of what happened those years and sometime we chat about that.
Admittedly, there is GFW trying to block some websites. But in the age of Internet, there is really nothing that could block us from the facts.