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Google.cn Still Remains In China
hackingbear writes "Google appears to be content to remain in China doing business as usual while it finds a way to work within the system, according to one of the search giant's founders. This despite a strong statement 30 days ago that it would stop censoring search results in China and possibly pull its business out of that country. And the company is still unwilling to confirm or deny if the alleged attacks were carried out by the Chinese government. 'I don't actually think the question of whether [the attacks were performed by] the Chinese government is that important,' Brin said. (That's the difference between state-sponsor vs. individual hacking. Why is that not important?) In the mean time, shortly after we celebrated google.cn lifting censorship, the exact same censorship has been quietly re-enabled as proved by this Chinese search query on June 4, despite the lack of any concrete actions by the Chinese government, which has so far made only useless general and standard statements on the matter."
And here we thought Google had a strong backbone to stand up to china. Apparently not.
Look this way while I go the other.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
-Filter prevention-
Happy people make bad consumers.
Obviously not being evil is too expensive... maybe that explains the amount of evil in the world in general.
Aren't these submissions supposed to be moderated to keep these walls of partially intelligible text off the main page?
LOL
Top businesspeople in company overrule moral arguments from staff in order to ensure future profits.
News at eleven.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
The quickest thing Google can do to lose the confidence of its users is be Two-Faced. With all the recent privacy concerns, if Google starts acting one way after saying "Don't be Evil," it's going to make everyone question if Google can be trusted. Can they?
It's true that the tank man does not rank number one on "tiananmen" as it does on google.com - but if I type tiananmen into the search box, the top suggestions are
tiananmen square protest
tiananmen square 1989
tiananmen square tank
tiananmen tank
tiananmen square tank man
tiananmen tank man
And if I make the search more specific by adding "tank", I do get a few copies of the infamously censored image on page 1, even on Google.cn.
Of course, I haven't digged this deeply before, so I don't know if the censorship was always this half-assed.
Doing business with a country where freedom of information is counter productive to your business model makes no sense.
when money is God WHO CARES RIGHT?
Well, yeah...
Where else would you put it?
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
Damn it, that made my day. Well played, sir, well played.
Google knows if your origin IP is chinese. I'm sure you get different results for google.cn if you are in china or out.
Some special Chinese agent made a visit at Brin’s house at night, reminding him that they could make him disappear “just like that”.
I hope not. But it would not surprise me a bit if this was how it happened.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Take a closer look at the source of that information. Google didn't lift the censorship and then re-enable it. Who was the source claiming that the censorship had already been lifted? If you look on the source that the slashdot article cites, that source says the rumors about the censorship having been lifted already were not correct. So, it seems no changes have been made to the search results yet. Did Google ever make a statement about how long time they would be willing to spend with the Chinese government on working out a solution? The way I read the announcement is that Google will spend a period negotiating with the Chinese government, and if it doesn't produce any results, they will shut down google.cn. The problem is, I don't know how long that period is going to be. If Google had stated, that it's patience would last another month, and they didn't make a move yet, they haven't stood by their word. But I haven't seen a statement from Google saying one month. I would have been surprised if such negotiations could have finished in a single month. Does anybody here have experience negotiating with the Chinese government? Can you tell us how fast results can be reached?
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=&btnG=Google+&aq=f&oq=
get's you the images of the tank man.
Someone at Google obviously understands politics and the sheep that "believe." Say one thing and do another. For example, W - I want a humble foreign policy, no nation building etc. Obama - I am going to bring the troops home, I am going to close Guantanamo. Blah Blah Blah. The suckers buy it every time.
Well, yeah...
Where else would you put it?
Australia?
and all the other languages that aren't written in ASCII. Unicode has been around for twenty years FFS.
people start sentences in the subject bar.
So Brin now says that it's not important, whether or not the Chinese gov't is behind the attack? WTF? Of course it's important, it makes all the difference in the world if this is state sponsored. And I thought Google was growing a spine, apparently not. Move along, nothing to see here...
Google, you are quickly losing any respect I had left for you.
One of China's communist controlled tabloids recently printed this headline Bill Gates bats for China. Perhaps Google should be faulted for tolerating China's totalitarian regime, but Microsoft embraces it. After all, when Gates says, "The Chinese efforts to censor the Internet have been very limited.", he means that you can access Microsoft.com and MSN in China. He's happy enough that all potential threats to both the Communist and Microsoft power structure, (facebook, blogspot, youtube, wikipedia, google...) are blocked or filtered in China. I was somewhat surprised (maybe I shouldn't have been), that the Chinese government seems to have a default blacklist policy. New webdomains are blocked even though they have almost no content (much less content critical of this government.) The people of China are wonderful, they deserve much more than the current regime has any intention of providing. We can thank Bill Gates of Microsoft for looking the other way while the government of a country where he stands to make billions leaves its own people in poverty. Wal-Mart and many other corporations have the same "don't ask, don't tell" policy when dealing with China's or indeed any other totalitarian government. Thank you Google for at least showing the world that the emperor has no clothes. Many of us will always respect that. And whether it is tomorrow or 1000 years from now, when the good people of China finally find their way out from under their government's oppression, they will thank you too.
Not that I was expecting any better from them. Too much money involved. Still, doesn't stop me from being disappointed anyhow.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Given: the summary is correct. Why might Google do this? The tone of the summary seems to accuse them of doing so, and that this is bad, with 'proof' being statements taken out of context and placed within the context which is being implied. But you can't get from thesis to QED without some logical connections more than "we say so".
The Chinese (gov't.; from the ministry of defense offices) have been attacking private (initially US and UK based Falun Gong and Free Tibet sites) and government web sites and other systems for 10 years now. If they wanted to get away with it, rather than it being known they could and would do so, that's plenty of time to learn to do so. That's also plenty of time for the US et al. to make and/or cut a deal with China for it to stop. But they/we haven't been able to.
Google has more investment in seeing this outcome than the US government, and has more resources on the ground in China that can be bargained with in order to make it happen.
Google can make happen what the US can't. And they're trying to. Google is outperforming the US government in terms of dealing with China in the context of the net. And yet people insist on seeing this as Google's continued wrong doing. But why?
Censorship? Here comes a clue. Catch: Most of the people in China want it. Nobody outside that nation has a right to tell it how to operate. And if those outside that country are dedicated to democracy as they claim, they wouldn't want to over ride the wishes of those people or their government. You can not like the fact that censorship is the choice of that country, and that's about all you can do, or you can prove yourselves hypocrites by supporting what amounts to subversion of the government of the world's largest nation.
As a business, Google doesn't pretend to such principles. They can exercise their options over the full range of possible behaviors. They can, in this fashion, accomplish what the US and others have been claiming they want to see happen -- an end to China's computer based hostilities. So, would you rather Google accomplish what people have been claiming they want to see China do -- stop the attacks -- or would you rather Google adhere to a set of principles that were someone attempting to do so upon you and yours, you'd consider and even worse attack? And should you see being forced into this choice as a kind of blackmail, welcome to global politics as practiced by most nations, according to the game rules set down and practiced by the US and allies. And last we looked, China was an ally no less than Israel (just as an example, not as a specific point to make), who doesn't engage in computer warfare with the US, but does engage in good old fashioned espionage against us.
Whether can't or won't, the US isn't stopping China and can't let itself cut the kind of deal Google can.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
...they thought about pulling out of China, but then they decided "Don't. Be evil."
In business as in life, if you feel you are in an uncomfortable situation and have exhausted the clear possibilities open to you, so that you are going to take unilateral action - you TAKE IT, you don't announce that you 'intend to take it'.
If Google WAS happy with Chinese censorship policies (and hence as mercenary as they are accused of) they clearly wouldn't even have raised this in the first place. There was clearly nothing to gain and no reason to 'appease' a strong anti-Google activist group (if such even exists) in the short term, given that these same would feel let down a short time later.
This was simply a negotiation ploy. Google doesn't have a 100% do-or-die stance towards _anything_, but they are clearly not comfortable with the censorship either, and the thing to do then is to try to get your way. Trying to get your way means applying leverage and pressure, such as veiled threats and implications. I would actually say that the massive public reaction WEAKENED Google's hand, because the public expectation for action was so strong that when they had to let that down it became blatantly obvious that it was an empty threat. Google was probably taken aback at the publicity as well. The Chinese could call back three days later and ask "Well, when do you leave?"
Try that query then look at the results. Compare the results from the query between google.cn and google.com. It's censored. Sad.
Check out the WoW machinima --it's had resonance far beyond the gaming community.
http://digicha.com/?p=125
I guess Google couldn't live without it's 25% market share in China. Clearly it needs the cash. We don't need Google, but Google needs us, and that's a fact.
All you morons who thought Google would actually cause China to cave and not the other way around, how does that crow taste?
Also, what a retarded article summary, clearly if they didn't follow our laws we were going to kick them out of China, the "concrete action" the summary refers to. The implicit threat of this was obviously enough for them to cave. Again, we don't need Google, but Google needs us.
"I think that the Chinese government has tens of millions of people in it. If you look at the army, the associated army, and whatnot, that's larger than most countries by far. So even if there were a Chinese government agent behind it, you know, it might represent a fragment of policy, as it were." from TFA
Imagine if this wasn't censorship of search results that we were talking about. Instead, imagine that the Chinese government looked the other way while local officials demanded bribes for keeping the office utilities running. If you're a multinational company, those are the kind of things you need to deal with...and reconcile with a different set of ethics.
Companies need to decide whether or not they are willing to play by the local rules when they jump into an international market. Those bribes they pay may not be a good ethical choice, but they may make the company much more profitable. Since company shareholders are the only concern for most companies, they need to set aside their feelings and do what the local government says.
Personally, I think what they're doing is fine, simply because it's not our place to tell a foriegn government what to do. It's their country, and human rights abuses, censorship, Taiwan and the Dalai Lama shouldn't really matter to American citizens. That's how China chooses to keep their country in line (and growing economically at 10%+ per year, I might add.) It seems to work well for them, and even if it didn't, we can't tell them otherwise. Doing so puts us on the same Cold War era "keeping the world safe for democracy" bandwagon that hasn't worked for us in four wars since WW2. I've long held the belief that once we solve 100% of our social problems at home, then we can go lecture people around the world about how to behave.
Isn't the important thing what Google.cn returns for someone in the USA, it's what it returns for someone in China. Why would the censoring be done by site rather than by querying IP?
rooooar
way to show them Sergey.
Google, as a publicly traded company, has only one obligation: to make a profit for shareholders. Let that soak in.
In doing so they have to do things like bow to the Chinese, track all of your searches, etc. It's business folks!
Unfortunately that also means that "do no evil", is more of a guideline than a rule. Maybe they should change their motto to "We do less evil than everyone else"
Really I'm amazed that anyone is surprised by this.
I've seen many stories about feminine hygiene products here lately, maybe the demographics are changing!
Anyone else notice the change to Search Language Preferences after the Google/China incident? It may just be a coincidence but the "Search for pages written in any language (Recommended)" option is no longer the default or an available option. The only option now is "Prefer pages written in these language(s)" with one of the languages sometimes selected and unselectable by default depending on your "Interface Language" setting or which localized version of Google you visit.
Where else would you put what?
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