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Google's New Approach For China Is To Serve From Hong Kong
abs0lutz3ro writes with a major update to the Google/China situation we've been discussing so much lately:
"Google has stopped censoring simplified Chinese search results on google.cn by redirecting users to google.com.hk, which Google maintains is entirely legal. From the official blog: 'We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced—it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, and have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China.' Seems like google.cn got served (from google.com.hk)."
Invade, conquer and annex Hong Kong.
Last time I checked, Hong Kong was was transfered to full Chinese control about 13 years ago. So is this some sort of symbolic stunt done for some obscure reason, or is it actually supposed to accomplish something? Saying you're going to defy Chinese control by moving your HQ from Beijing to Hong Kong is like saying you're going to get out from under U.S. control by moving from New York to Chicago.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
They moved their servers from China to... China.
China's next move will be to block access to google.com.hk for all Internet users in China ... so how does this help?
Anytime google says, "china", it's going to be front page news on slashdot.
How does this actually work? does the mainland china google just have links to the hong kong web site? which when you go there then has links to banned content?
Or what exactly?
I was under the impression the great firewall of china did not have it's barn door open. e.g. if the Falun Gong or Uhgers had a Hong kong web page would it be visible all over china?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
What's Chinese for Streisand Effect?
You couldn't pay for such publicity.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
It may be "completely legal" to provide uncensored Simplified Chinese search in Hong Kong, but that doesn't mean "mainland"[1] China won't just block google.com.hk in response (which it probably will, soon).
[1] Yes, this is accepted term for it.
Hong Kong is part of China, it has different regulations however as a result of being handed over by the UK. I believe the phrase is "one country, two systems". In all fairness its not a bad idea; if China were this flexible over Tibet they would be getting a lot of International Brownie points
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
If they wanted to piss off the PRC, they might have redirected to Google Taiwan instead. :P
So, what % of the search market will Google now own after this change?
I would imagine a LOT of people would start using Google if they found out it was uncensored.
It will be interesting to watch how their market share changes from this.
How do the Chinese people feel about what is going on? I understand that their government has X stance and is sticking with it, but Google seems hell bent on getting around this because ..... why? Do they just want to piss off the Chinese government or are they just trying to make a name for themselves in China? It seems like they are trying to subvert the government for their own well being without thinking of the consequences it could have on the culture of the country.
Should we all back up your e-mail and documents on Google's services in case the Aurora attacks were by non-goverment-sponsored Chinese nationalists? (I am assuming that the government would not be so stupid as to try to do something potentially incriminating for the second time in a row).
My limited understanding of Hong Kong vis a vi China is that the Chinese allow a certain amount of economic freedom to Hong Kong in order to reap the benefits. Although Hong Kong might enjoy more freedom than the rest of China, there is no doubt that the Chinese do in fact own Hong Kong and Hong Kong is in fact part of China. I wonder if there will be any backlash against Hong Kong as a whole because of what Google is doing.
In a nutshell it seems like they're saying, "Nahy nahy, we're in Hong Kong now. You can't touch us." That seems rather short sighted to me. On the other hand, they have a fairly defensible position. Would the Chinese risk looking like even more severe tyrants by disrupting the dynamics that govern companies in Hong Kong?
And BOOM goes the DYNAMITE!
~Mekkah
This type of logic is inane. If a spouse says "Don't make me hit you," and then proceeds to beat their spouse for not having dinner ready the person doing the beating is at fault. China is responsible for China's actions pure and simple. What Google has does in perfectly LEGAL within the current legal structure of China, if they don't like their own laws....
how difficult is it to gain unrestricted internet access in china ? do you have to be a computer hacker or can anyone download some sort of onion thingy and just browse ?
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
it is all of us that live with censorship and fabricated news whereas China and North Korea are free?
Ever since Hong Kong return to China politicians and activists have tried to preserve the region's freedoms. The consensus seems to be that Hong Kong has been losing those freedoms, China has done a lot of meddling and the government has generally sided with the PRC. I don't recall the precise details but recently a number of politicians have openly protested China trying to exert more control. If I remember correctly, I think they suggested Hong Kong's politicians resigning en masse bringing about new elections with the hope that people would vote in those who would preserve the region's autonomy. I don't think much of anything came of it.
From a business perspective Hong Kong is, without question, a far more mature market. They wont face the same kind of cut-throat market still rampant in China. The problem in China for Google isn't simply one of hackers. A company will try to set up a partnership with a Chinese company and that company will turn on them, stealing whatever they can in the process. And the foreign company will be powerless to do anything about it because the Chinese courts almost always side with their own companies. Punishments for Chinese companies tend to amount to a slap on the wrist. Some very successful people have gotten burned badly in China. Certainly, there's success to be had, but you'd better be vigilant and have a very trusted networks. I have friends who have dipped their toes in China and have decided that the potential for success wasn't worth the trouble.
The nature of Google's business gives them the luxury of not having to be physically present in China. But the fact is that they still are in China, they're going to be facing many of the same issues they were facing in the mainland.
If they were serious about making a statement they'd base themselves in Taiwan. But then again, the Taiwanese government probably doesn't want to get involved, especially given the current administration.
Here's the new graphic Google is planning on using on their Hong Kong-based services for mainland China:
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
when you think about it.
China can either draw attention to the fact that they treat the residents of Hong Kong differently to the Chinese mainland by blocking internet traffic within 'China' or raise the ire of the HK residents (who they are so so wanting to keep happy) by cutting them off.
Personally whilst I'm all for the 'internet being without censorship' - I think the kicking of China is somewhat unfair. Whilst China may be quite upfront about saying "this is wrong, we don't want you to see it" - pretty much every other government on the planet is keeping tabs on visits to 'certain sites' (or hell-bent on pushing legislation/monitoring through).
For a very similar reason as Google China, local government, politicians and businesses are more than welling to restrict the influence of Google. They will find many different way to restrict Google simply every government has its own form of censorship.
One of the big things China is banging on about is that Google needs to obey their laws. Ok, fine, they are. They are locating themselves in Hong Kong and obeying the law there, which as China will happily tell you is a part of China.
May make people ask why China is being so bitchy if Google is IN China and obeying the laws. All one country... right?
I am in mainland PRC, and I never used google.cn, I always just used google.COM because most of what I'm looking for is in English anyway.
Well, I can't get to Google.COM this morning. Everything redirects to google.hk.
Even if I click the link at the bottom that says "Go to Google.com" it doesn't work.
Here's hoping they will fix this soon.
My daughter just moved to china to work for a year. Our family has a google app domain that we all use for email. Before she left I configured her laptop so she could send and receive mail but I'm worried that google's china dispute might escalate.
Does anyone know the mechanism used by the "great firewall"? For example, if our MX records are aspmx.l.google.com (and from memory google run their SMTP/IMAP on non-standard ports too) is this likely to be caught up in a series of tit-for-tat blocking or will it just be things like good old port 80 to gmail.com?
The webpage report linked in the article still shows gmail as not blocked, but if it does get blocked will my daughter be cut off from her email address at our family's google-hosted domain?
--M
# grep slashdot access.log | grep html | sort | uniq | wc -l 2604
It's so easy to be blinded by our own perspective on things. Where is the balance between law and censorship? Today we tell China they shouldn't censor and allow pornography. Tomorrow, other countries tell the United States that they shouldn't censor child pornography. After all, child porn isn't illegal in most countries http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=184429489
How do we justify the illegality of child pornography in our country while we harp on the laws of another land?
The date is formatted "M/D/YY".
It's only the two little countries above Central America and a couple of small islands that use that format. I expected Google to be a bit more worldly than this.
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The strange things are that the mainland cable TV networks (in the southern provinces) carry full TV programs from HK, because they are more popular than the politically correct programs from the mainland TV networks, but block only during the broadcast of certain sensitive news item. Of course, even a fool would tell something bad has happened by this type of blunt actions. And therefore nobody really believes whatever the government is saying. Yet at the same time, majority of the same people seem to agree that (a) social stability is more important than anything else; (b) some truths are better kept as open secrets.
The only good is that the Chinese government's propaganda control is largely still very blunt and kaming it easy to tell it is progranda. When they fully learned American style political marketing and packaging, it would be worse.
It had hard time in gaining market share in China because it's late entry in the Chinese language search market.
Hong Kong is losing it's influence to Shanghai. It's harder and harder for the business in Hong Kong to compete with the business in China.
British signed the 100-year lease with Qing Emperor with a gun pointing to Emperor's head. The least would end in 1997. China told British in early 80s that they want HK back. British said, I got bigger guns and bad a$$ Navy. China said, I got nukes and China ran two nuke tests right before the negotiations. British said, ok HK is yours.
As the man stood before the tank, he is still alive and well. What does that tells you?
The results are shown in the search results, but can't be open because they are still blocked by the Great Firewall... How useless this is! If Google is serious, they should ship a "censorship resistant browser" to the Chinese, and provide proxy service to make this possible.
...but by the Great Firewall of China instead of Google themselves. Google have moved to HK and are providing an uncensored version of Chinese search results and news, they have essentially in-sourced censoring back to the Chinese government. Sat in mainland China if you search on google.* for anything about the TianAnMen 'Incident' or Fulan Gong, and you get a connection reset and are blocked from the search site for a minute or so. This is probably the best stalemate between Google and the PRC. Google gets the PR kudos for providing uncensored results, like they said they would, and right under the Chinese government's nose. China expels the foreign invader not playing by its laws, looks like the hurt party for google being so brazen for running their shop in HK, and *still* gets to filter all China mainland usage of google.* through its firewall (as provided by your friends Cisco). Another sad thing is that folks using google.com.hk, that are no longer being explicitly told "these search results are being censored by the law of the Chinese government", that's what happened on the old .cn site. I'd prefer being told things are being censored by the demands of a third party than a connection reset and a 1 minute GoogleBan.
The really bad thing is that google.com now also gets redirected to google.com.hk, which is not what I want at all.
I hope they will fix this.
For what it's worth, because basically every single post in this discussion is wrong: 1) Hong Kong Google provides uncensored Internet search results. However, the websites themselves are still censored. For instance, using Hong Kong Google won't be a magic way to access blocked porn sites. Really the uncensored results are kind of a pain for normal use, it just means a bunch of broken links. 2) Hong Kong Google isn't anything new to China. Before Google set up a PRC Google, 3 years ago or so, that was the way PRC China users accessed Google. And for the past 3 years, Hong Kong Google has always been accessible. 3) Hong Kong is China, but the government in effect is guaranteed independence until 2047. Obviously there's some caveats and whatnot, but the PRC wouldn't just renege on this and tell HK Google what to do, because it would look bad internationally, and because they'd like Taiwan to agree to something similar. 4) Really, what this will do is slow Google searches by .03 seconds, and search results will provide a lot of links to websites that have been blocked (which if you're searching non-sensitive items in Chinese language, doesn't happen all that often - if you're searching non-sensitive English items, there are a fair number of false positives). I'm guessing a lot of localizations also will be lost or left undeveloped (for instance, Google Maps can tell you which subways to take to get around Shanghai).
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
What This link report that ?? http://www.google.com/prc/report.html Its Shows the Status of 3/21/10 But at the END of Page "©2010 Google - Last updated: March 20, 2010 9:52:32 PM PDT" Hows this possible that Site Updated 1Day before that Data is Showing.. :D
Well i dont know how can anyone use baidu, it is so crappy, you can pay to rank higher, so the searchs are all tampered. China will have to realize what are they doing by letting google go.
We live in China and cant access Google.com anymore because of their stupid redirect to HK - that is terrible, google is terrible. How can you discount entire expat community? who want to use google hk?? Jesus
Although Hong Kong is technically part of China, it is still in many ways independent. Physically, there is a border control between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. In terms of Internet topology, Hong Kong is outside the Great Firewall of China. The PRC government can block access from mainland China to google.com.hk, just as it can block access to google.com or any other site. This sounds more like a face-saving statement by Google to claim that they are still technically operating in China than a strategic move.
Thermite is your friend.
When you have to actually implement that Go To Hell Plan® whilst up to your ass in gators, remember...Thermite is your friend.
Hell, it may even keep some of the gators away!
BTW, there is no such thing as 'too much Thermite'[1], but there have been cases of 'not enough Thermite'....something to ponder.
[1] Hint: 'The Goggles! They do NOTHING!' is the effect you should be striving for.
Also, the obligatory disclaimer.
Remember kiddies, don't try this at home...save it for the data centers and server rooms!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Remember the hippie-era cartoon that shows an owl swooping down on a mouse who is gamely flipping off the owl? The caption was "The last great act of defiance". The mouse knows he is totally toast but wants to go out while he still has a pair.
Right, wrong, makes no difference whatsoever. If China wants Google to disappear, they will be gone faster than a Republican can say "No".
There's another side to this isn't there? Hong Kong tax rates are notoriously low. And knowing how Google avoids paying tax at any costs in some countries (they paid no tax in the UK last year on UK ad revenues of almost $2bn - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/20/google-uk-tax-avoidance) what's to say they aren't doing exactly the same here, still milking the Chinese market whilst enjoying the tax breaks of locating/serving from Hong Kong. This has never been about ethics or morals and has always been only about 'business'.
And why should China obey that declaration. Doesn't the UK need China more than China needs the UK? Is the UK going to invade China? China can do what it wants in Hong Kong and they will do it if they think it's necessary.
If the British decide to press the issue, it could easily turn into WW3.
I personally am not against other forms of Government apart from democracy, as long as it appears that they have the general support in the population of the country concerned.
In other words, as long as there were some periodic indication that Tibetans wanted a Theocracy, thats what they would get
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon