Behind Google's Recent Decision About China

yuhong writes "This article by The Independent takes a look at what is behind the recent decisions made by Google regarding China, particularly regarding Sergey Brin, born in the USSR, [and whose origins] played a big part in this decision. From the article: 'He's always had an emotional tug within him, saying "we shouldn't be making compromises," says Ken Auletta, the author of Googled: The End of the World As We Know It.'"

Comments

Hate google or not

[GundamFan]

Standing up to China takes stones. Having said that, I am more and more afraid that they'll own all of us in my lifetime anyway.

Re:Hate google or not

[yog]

Hm, I'm not sure why anyone would "hate" Google. I like using all their free stuff, and my Nexus One is the cat's pajamas. I agree with you that it takes some big cajones to stand up to the PRC government, which is getting richer and scarier. But we have to remember a few historical facts. China is currently the low cost acceptable quality manufacturer in the world. This will not hold forever. Remember when it was Taiwan and Korea, and before that Japan? China will eventually face a situation where its cheap labor is a liability rather than an asset. They can't perpetuate this divide between the haves and have-nots forever. The cities will get richer, more expensive to live in, and knowledge worker wages will rise. Infrastructure needs will scream for more taxation, and cost of living will increase. Everyone will want a car, then two cars, then a house with a garage, etc. There's a price for moving to a consumption economy. China's paranoid regime will spend more on expensive new military gear and, gradually, it will increasingly resemble a Western economy. They can "near-source" their manufacturing to the hinterland, e.g. Sichuan, Guangdong, Guangxi, etc. for a while longer but not forever. Eventually, some other manufacturing region will become prominent--maybe parts of India, South America, or Africa, where wages are still very low and people are glad for any kind of work. Or, robotics and nanotech will finally kick in and remove the low wage advantage from the equation, and the U.S. may reemerge as a major manufacturer. A factory on every corner, with made-to-order consumer goods while you wait, for example. As for the Google situation, it's not over yet. I suspect there will be some kind of win-win understanding between the two parties where Google will be relieved of censorship duties, but the PRC government will find some other way to effectively censor search results without either side admitting any concession.

Re:Hate google or not

[OakDragon]

Thank you, that's an excellent response to all the China v. America doom-saying that's going on these days. Twenty years ago - and I am old enough to remember it first hand - it was Japan that was going to bury us. There are very good reasons that China's prospects look bleak rather than promising.

Re:Hate google or not

[javilon]

On the other hand, Microsoft is quite happy collaborating with the Chinese government in clamping on freedom of expression.

If only for that reason, you'll never catch me using bing.

There are the moral reasons and also the fact that information about you can end up in the hands of Chinese officials. Of course the later is more important for the Chinese population living abroad and for companies competing against Chinese products (most of the big ones if not all)

Re:Hate google or not

[OwMyBrain]

Standing up to China takes stones.

Having said that, I am more and more afraid that they'll own all of us in my lifetime anyway.

Google or China?

Re:Hate google or not

[jgardia]

cajones = drawers, cojones = the word you wanted to use.

Re:Hate google or not

[jgtg32a]

Um no,
China owns 23.35% of the foreign dept of the US (JA is next w/ 21.13%), foreign dept is 27.90% of the total public dept.
Giving China a grand total of 6.51% of the total dept of the US

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

Re:Hate google or not

[jgtg32a]

Oh wow, I don't know what's worse me using dept instead of debt or you not using a regexp to correct it. ;)

Re:Hate google or not

[Neoprofin]

The US has been living on credit every single day of it's history with the exception of January 8, 1835, the only time in history the government hasn't owed anyone money.

Like Father Like Son

[eldavojohn]

This article by The Independent takes a look at what is behind the recent decisions made by Google regarding China, particularly regarding Sergey Brin was born in the USSR which played a big part in this decision.

Interesting, Sergey's father faced the problem of having to compromise by abandoning his faith and culture in order to get the job he wanted (astronomer) or stay Jewish and be reduced/stunted in a select set of careers. Now Sergey has a similar decision where he can choose either his principles or a chance at one sixth of the world's population as a market. Should be an interesting choice.

I hope he realizes that once he cashes in the choice will no longer be his and will be a painfully obvious one for the investors. Capitalistic greed, while much less worse than flaws of implemented Socialism, has its evils too, Sergey.

Re:Like Father Like Son

[Xest]

I wouldn't be suprised if that's why they cashed in- so that they can do a u-turn without losing face themselves, they can simply say the investors decided for them and it was out of their hand. Still, I could be wrong, we may be pleasantly suprised.

That said, he definitely seems to be the good guy at Google- he certainly seems worlds apart from Schmidt who actually seems to believe in the surveillance state.

Re:Like Father Like Son

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, even after "cashing out", they'll still control 48% of the voting rights, so it would have to be a unanimous vote against them, with nobody abstaining. That's unlikely.

Re:Like Father Like Son

[blind biker]

They didn't cash in - from what I understand, they filed a notice with the SEC (per one of the Insider Trading Sanctions Acts), just in case if they want to cash in a larger part of their securities.

That said, yes, Brin seems a nice guy through and through

Well yes... but:

[saibot834]

If only they would have stood up for free speech at the beginning, and not only after they found themselves with a disappointing 29% market share.

Re:Well yes... but:

[eldavojohn]

If only they would have stood up for free speech at the beginning, and not only after they found themselves with a disappointing 29% market share.

Er, Baidu had 1) been operating for seven years already when Google.cn was founded in China and 2) had the benefits of being a Chinese company that no doubt had leaders more in tune with Chinese culture.

Pick a country foreign to you. Now give your competitors a seven year head start. Now try to enter the market. Now tell me that 29% is "disappointing." Has anyone come even close to that against Google in the US?

I'd say 29% is pretty astonishing. What were you expecting?

Re:Well yes... but:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the point. Fighting an uphill battle and then at some point claiming to pull out due to freedom of speech issues isn't quite as believable as a world leader in search not entering a market due to freedom of speech issues.

Re:Well yes... but:

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If only they would have stood up for free speech at the beginning, and not only after they found themselves with a disappointing 29% market share.

Microsoft would kill for a 29% market share of the search business in the USA.

Re:Well yes... but:

[NeoSkandranon]

Re: Baidu, It has less to do with "leaders in tune" and more to do with nationalism really.

That google was able to establish the share they did in the face of being foreigners is astonishing indeed.

Re:Well yes... but:

[jbezorg]

AC:

That's not the point. Fighting an uphill battle and then at some point claiming to pull out due to freedom of speech issues isn't quite as believable as a world leader in search not entering a market due to freedom of speech issues.

From the article:

Could Beijing really countenance a filter-free search engine? Probably not. But it also knows that driving Google from China would be a public relations catastrophe.

I think Google entering the market and then leaving has a more profound effect since that 36% of the population will actually have a tangible experience to relate to. What may happen is that Google may be able to leverage this so that censorship is less restrictive on google.cn. and in order to compete Baidu would have to do the same.

From the article:

It was Schmidt who put the business case for Google to expand into China: with 384 million internet users, it is the world's biggest digital market – of which Google has grasped about 36 per cent since 2006. But Brin and Page spent a year weighing the pros and cons of the decision on what they called their "evil scale" before approving the launch of Google.cn.

It's a pragmatic approach to "do no evil" rather than an idealistic one and in my opinion a better one since the idealistic approach would have made less progress or any progress at all.

Re:Well yes... but:

[blind biker]

That's not the point. Fighting an uphill battle and then at some point claiming to pull out due to freedom of speech issues isn't quite as believable as a world leader in search not entering a market due to freedom of speech issues.

It is exactly the opposite: claiming not to enter a market (where they would face an uphill battle to get even the tiniest marketshare) due to freedom of speech issues is much less believable than pulling out after achieving a very respectable 29%, after all the money and time invested to get to those 29%.

And you were modded "insightful"? Mods must be smoking something powerful.

not surprised at Brin

[roman_mir]

I am a stern opponent to anything communist/socialist in nature, being born and raised until the age of 16 back in the non-existent USSR. I am also against this buddy-buddy system, that apparently all of these so called capitalist societies have. There is no principled system anywhere, in the 'communist' countries, it's basically a dictatorship and no free enterprise is allowed to compete with it, because there is no competition, the planned economy is doomed. In the so called 'capitalist' countries now it is all about buying power in the government to push forward agenda of getting free money printed by the government.

Hong Kong seems to be the place where the society came as close as possible to the real free market system, money is created by private entities, there are competing currencies, government can't dilute the value and give preferential treatment to certain corporations, banks, etc. You don't like what one monetary system is doing, move your business to another. I am sure it has its problems, which I am not aware of, since I never lived there, but it seems to be the best out of everything I have seen or hear of so far.

I am not surprised that Brin is the guy who takes the principled stand and I would not be surprised to find out that he came up with the 'no evil' slogan. It's obviously going to be a losing battle, if we know anything about people, they'll fuck up anything until it's dead, look at HP, they used to be the 'no evil' company of engineers. I just remembered the horror stories connected to a professional firm jumping shark-ceo type, Fiorina was her name?

That's the problem, we can't live forever, so our principles die with us and there is nothing much we can do past that to promote our ideals. We try, but looks like we fail in all cases, that's too bad.

Good luck to Brin in this battle, I don't know that even his crazy fortune can fight off this one for too long and I don't know how interested he will be in that once enough pressure is applied from enough people interested in profit motive only.

China Betrayed Them

[Doc Ruby]

The compromise that Google made with China was agreeing to Chinese censorship in exchange for China's protection from privacy invasion beyond that allowed by the laws Google agreed to follow. Then Google saw that protection was either useless against Chinese hackers, or betrayed by the Chinese government itself (or both).

When you pay the mafia for "protection" but you get broken into anyway, you stop paying the mafia. If you can. We'll see whether Google is tougher than China's mafia government.

Re:China Betrayed Them

[elrous0]

Yep, this wasn't some moral decision. Google was perfectly happy to play ball with China until they stole some of Google's propriety code (and hence threatened their bottom line). If China had never threatened Google financially, they would happily have gone on turning over names and censoring the web indefinitely.

Re:China Betrayed Them

[Vintermann]

> they stole some of Google's propriety code

I haven't seen anyone saying they did this. What they did was attack some of Google's customers, specifically some who work for human rights in China. Granted, since it was a hacking attempt at Google itself, they could probably have gone for code instead, but that's not what happened.

China's reputation for industrial espionage may or may not be especially deserved. Their human rights record, however, there is little dispute of.

What the hell is with the summaries lately?!

[Dorkmaster Flek]

particularly regarding Sergey Brin was born in the USSR which played a big part in this decision.

Holy shit, can we please proofread summaries before submitting stories? How the hell did you people pass high school English?