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China Hits Back At Google
sopssa writes "After Google yesterday started redirecting google.cn users to their uncensored Hong Kong-based google.com.hk servers, the Chinese government has now hit back at Google by restricting access to Google's Hong Kong servers. 'On Tuesday mainland China users could not see uncensored Hong Kong-based content after the government either disabled certain searches or blocked links to results.' China Mobile, the largest wireless carrier in the country, has also been approached by the Chinese government to cancel a contract with Google about having google.cn on their mobile home page for search. China Unicom, the second largest carrier in China, has also either postponed or killed the launch of Android-based mobile phones in the country."
WHY are there NO comments for this yet?!??!
Google, it's your turn ...
This will end when Google is completely blocked (or 'filtered') by China. I really don't see any other outcome. China will never budge on these issues (at least not in my lifetime) and Google has already burned some of its bridges to China.
This is going to be a long battle with everyone loosing in the end. Now they are removing Android Phones from China. I wish Google luck and hope they stick to it.
This war could be really hard. But in the end, it's the Chinese people who lose, not Google nor the Chinese "government".
I'm not sure how in the hell capitalists here in the U.S. decided we could do fair business with a totalitarian communist nation. They don't value workers rights, free speech, or even a fair marketplace.
The Chinese citizen employees at Google.cn. My thoughts are with them if they are experiencing anything negative other than unemployment from their parent company's decision to thumb their nose at the Chinese government.
Let's hope that working for Google.cn doesn't leave them with a social stigma or government imposed sanction or -- far worse -- bodily harm to them and their families. Hopefully their red society didn't give them a scarlet letter.
That said, the Chinese people have little to look forward to with Baidu in such a dominating lead they can stagnate back to the stone age and people won't have much of a choice. It'll be interesting to see how much of Google.cn's 35% marketshare Bing manages to snag.
My work here is dung.
They obviously know what's best for their people, and you're just interfering. (sarcasm) Just let it go, pull completely out of the market, and call it a day. Besides, the longer this lingers on, the more Chinese black hats are gonna slam your servers.
Just "concede" defeat (and Chinese ass-hattery) and call it a day.
Sent from your iPad.
China hits like a girl.
Everyone expected China to do this. It also means that they are saying that the Chinese in HK are different from the rest of China. I wonder if that will affect anything. Not to be cynical, but I am sure the propaganda machine will go on overdrive to put a spin on it.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Google philosophy is just not compatible with chineese, whatever it is, so they finally don't like themselves. Then, Who Cares? I see that google probably doesn't really like this, as they are losing ~15% of potential GMinion population; but this is the only disadvantaged side I can imagine.
(btw., news from friends from china - google services are usually easily available via commonly known proxies...so it's probably not that hard at all)
The next obvious move for Google is to launch their own satellites and provide free satellite internet access for everyone in the world.
Google watches literally EVERYTHING you do. Google has used its dominance to attack and undermine Apple, and has tried to kill off the iPhone (for example). I think it is a good thing that China is not allowing these shenanigans to continue and are being brave enough to stand up to the most evil company in the world.
It may be an hour later, or a year later, but China will be hungry for Google again.
... we shall see how much money google can make over VPN only traffic!
The war between China and Google will certainly become more interesting when Google develops its own nuclear weapons. They probably have all the information they need to complete them, all they have to do is... google it.
Looking for a computer support specialist for your small business? Check out
The Chinese government doesn't seem to understand that it is very easy to circumvent their great wall of censorship. They merely hurt themselves and their own people. Of course, what this does is give a competitive advantage to people smart enough to get around the government - a bit of evolution in action.
Does it matter? Chinese outnumber Americans 4 to 1...
But hey, when the labor is cheap and can do almost the same as our expensive labor, who cares?!? North American citizens? Mmmmmmmm wait a minute.... nope, the WalMart parking lot is still full....
You forgot about the icing on the cake: they don't care about their environment! Since their officials are all corrupt, it's just a matter of greasing some of the bureaucratic wheels and those heavy metals in the drinking water aren't a problem! Not only are we exporting unskilled labor, we're exporting our pollution!
*cough*
What's that you say? Their people are suffering? China uses the same planet we do? We'll eventually suffer from each other's pollution? I liked it better when my point of view was limited to my immediate surrounding area where I can find a coffee maker for $12 at Walmart.
My work here is dung.
Not in China, at least. But there's still several billion people elsewhere in the world.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think Google and everyone else knew this was a losing battle. The point however was to call the CCP out in the open and force them to bleed a little. The blood is fresh, but will anyone from the inside the party attempt reform? I find it hard to believe there is no descension among the party. Question is, how many and do they have the courage and fortitude to see this through?
Life is not for the lazy.
This war could be really hard. But in the end, it's the Chinese people who lose, not Google nor the Chinese "government".
You grossly overestimate Google's importance.
You grossly underestimate the Chinese people.
The whole thing smells like a PR stunt. Google still maintains sales office and R&D center in China. What, those won't get hacked by the Chinese?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I am surprised that it took this long for China to block the latest trick by Google. Who didn't see this coming the moment it was mentioned in the press?
Of course this is or would become a cat and mouse game. China blocks, Google counters, China counters Google's counter.
Fight Spammers!
web crawlers help you not find content.
If you really want to hurt Google, don't completely block access... just filter out all their ads.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You made the assumption that the US government would allow such a move. We have several client states that would revolt if we provided democratizing influences like free access to information. These states include: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey...
The US Government would now allow such a move against China either, since they are our most lucrative trading partner, and damn close to becoming more than that. Money matters to us a hell of a lot more than freedom.
Supplies!!
Google's pull-out or not will have exactly zero effect on the amount of U.S. dollars flooding into China. Why would the Chinese govt. care in the least if google leaves.
It's a big fucking deal.
Let the great pissing contest of 2010 begin...
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
I spent all this effort to put china in my app
Back Seat Driver V
and now it won't come out, bummer.
values-zh-rCn
values-zh-rTW
Charity without money, priceless
I think this quote from Samuel Johnson basically sums it up
I consider that in no government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. If a sovereign oppresses his people to a great degree, they will rise and cut off his head. There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.
The masses of China are all dirt poor, they don't know what they are missing. Those privileged few with access to the internet either A) Are underground so Western media doesn't know about them B) Realize that under this oppressive system they can enjoy wealth while others starve and so long as its working for them, why change or C) Don't think China is evil. By censoring they start waking up group C, the natural progress of technology is going to soon give -everyone- in China access to the internet. If they keep showing that they censor, people are going to wake up and overthrow the government. It will happen once technology has improved and the quality of living gives the average Chinese citizen internet access and the knowledge that they won't be starving.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Owned. No one can win against the Chinese government when they buy from a "Nokia Siemens" like supplier, unfortunately.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Then, Who Cares?
The stock holders. As much as we can commend the Google leadership for their moral stances, they are a corporation and they are beholden to the stock holders.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
China will never budge on these issues (at least not in my lifetime)
The Chinese government will budge if they think they are about to be lined up and shot by the enraged population. Each time they do something that irks the 'masses' they are one step closer to this end. this might happen next year, it might happen next century. The only thing I can say is that Google leaving China isn't a net plus for the communist government.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Sorry to rain on the populist parade but I don't think petty internet censorship alone is sufficient provocation for most people to feel inclined to risk their own lives and moreover the lives of all their friends and family by participating in any schemes of violent rebellion. The corollary to that quote should be that any government power can be abused forever as long as the abuses aren't flagrant enough to drive people to risk everything in revolt. See US Congress.
Anyone else expect them to restrict google from indexing their content? I mean, why share that with the Googlebot?
Yeh, because there's never been a rebellion in the US...
I consider that in no government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. If a sovereign oppresses his people to a great degree, they will rise and cut off his head.
While I generally agree with this (witness the former Soviet Bloc, the American South etc.) I sometimes wonder if it always applies. For example, the conditions in North Korea have been appalling for 50+ years. How much longer before the people rise up and cut off the sovereign's head?
And what happened to that guy who was thrown in jail for non-fraudently fixing satellite dishes so they could see certain channels? Oh yaa, that was in the US, forget about it. Of course Al-Manar is "terrorist"...according to the US, and other current/former British colonies (which I'll call CFBC's). This seems to be a CFBC confusion though, no other countries in the world aside from the CFBC's (and Holland for some reason) see Al-Manar or Hezbollah as terrorist.
Of course he was wrong. As long as there are enough people who are still comfortable enough or feel they have too much to lose the they will put up with almost anything. The US illustrates this.
This pr fest from google smells. A list of events: 1) Google decides to play and be evil, and go in China and censor their results (define this level of censorship as 50%), 2) China tightens censorship (to 100%), 3) Google takes the moral high ground and says it does not like censoring. Well, they liked 50%, so, they should shut up instead of, once again, act the "do no evil" thing out of pr purposes, and flee like they are morally superior. Google's only real motivation is clearly evident from 1) and is: get more page views, so you can sell more adds and increase profit. Looks like a power play to me. Google is losing on the Chinese market to Baidu. But here comes the White Knight google, aiming at the internet savvy youth who know how to bypass censoring anyway. It is the whole fake thing all over again. If they weren't a fake White Knight, fighting the evil forces of this world, they wouldn't have been in China to start with. And now they lost their right to whine and complain. If only the thing would end. Either stay and be evil or get out and move on. But nooo, this thing will last and last and last. It's about money after all, and hoping the power play will result into an opening and an increased marketing share.
This is why speeches and retoric from the US are turning to IP.
I predict that in the future, when technology/infrastructure/utilities can run at little cost, IP(or specifically the revenue stream thereof) will be the new oil.
A country will be invaded for failure to adhere to IP.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
But look at -what- the Chinese government are censoring. Terms like the Tienanmen Square massacre where people died, that can certainly spark protests. Religion is censored, and as we know from history even small differences can lead to large problems.
People would and have risked their lives in the name of religion. People have and would risk their lives in support of those who they believe died for a worthy cause.
If it stayed like this, I doubt it would inspire revolutions. But with all of the talk about it, it is going to make people wonder -what- they are censoring. When they figure out what, they won't understand why. When they finally understand why they will see that the Chinese government is corrupt.
Think about it this way, if you don't know about curse words, there is no need to look them up. But how many of us once our parents told us that one word was a "bad word" tried to look it up in the dictionary? None of us would look it up otherwise, but once we know that it is "forbidden" knowledge we will look it up. The Chinese government and Google are effectively telling us that there -are- "curse words" tempting some of the citizens to look it up.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
- China tells Google to play along. Google refuses.
- China tells Google to be nice or ELSE. Google threatens to leave.
- China says 'make my day'. Google serves Chinese queries via google.com.hk.
- China blocks google.com.hk. Google says 'fine, we are done'.
- China blocks all Google enterprises in China, Android phone rollouts are stopped, etc.
- Google rescinds licensing for Android to Chinese manufacturers. Somehow.
- Google fires off a restraint of trade action, gets U.S. Customs to impound all incoming Android phones.
- Chinese manufacturers petition their government (privately) to make nice with Google.
- China stops with the .hk blocking and merely filters.
- Google calls off the dogs.
- All quiet.
Or something like that.
Does Google have a shred of leverage with Android and any other 'products'? Maybe they stop indexing Chinese content for international use? I dunno, but this is as sensible as anything else.
Except that the Chinese may not actually care about the potential impact. And Google may yet lose out somehow. But I'm betting they feel like this is losing something they never actually had. NO loss.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Tomorrow Google will announce that no search results pointing to sites in China will be displayed.
Chinese companies see their overseas business drop by 5% in the first month . . .
Google founders are fairly liberal (they donated money to the No on 8 campaign in California, for example), so I wouldn't be surprised if they had a fondness for Obama and his health care plan. The decision to redirect google.cn to the HK version came a few weeks after the initial announcement, but exactly the day after the passing of the health care bill. This would certainly distract some attention away from the right wing scaremongers at FOX and others, which would in turn help the democrats. The timing is just too neat to be casual. Is it?
PS: Nothing that there's anything wrong with the move, should it be like this. Just idly speculating...
To do list for Windows
I've watched a few interviews with people in North Korea, the people there honestly believe that the rest of the world is filled with starvation and that North Korea is the only place with "plenty" (even though many starve) they are told that their leader is a best selling author (I remember on one of the interviews the Korean asked if they had read Kim-Jung-Il's books because they were said that they were worldwide best sellers) and basically told that Korea is the best place on earth. They have complete isolation (embargoed against most western countries, no internet, no outside TV/radio) and honestly believe the propaganda.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
At some point China (and any other country which restricts free speech) must either (1) degrade their Internet service severely or (2) allow a "leaky wall" Option 1 means that they will inevitably fall behind the rest of the world in areas like science and commerce which they care about. If that process is continued long enough they become irrelevant - like the notion of Somalia invading the US. Option 2 means that they will have to live with losing all control over the information they most want to suppress. This is one area where a democracy is far better equipped to deal with than any totalitarian government.
You mean the Whiskey Rebellion?
$ make available
...Because we all know there haven't been any rebellions in the US (there never was a Confederate States of America, right?) and no riots at all, right?
And of course there have been -no- protests at all. Nope.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
They might just wait for him to die and then overthrow the government.
$ make available
The majority of the 'masses' are doing just fine and are about as interested in lining the 'government' up as they were before this whole brouhaha. That's the unfortunate result of living in a country where the government actively controls the media, you are always told you are doing well and any inconveniences are necessary sacrifices for the good of the cause. Which is also why China won't budge an inch over this, since Google has the power to cause the populace to believe differently.
Where's William Gibson when you need him!
I detect "Neuromancer" type stuff happening.
Shhhhh. The Yakuza might get you!
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
They should task all of the potentially soon to be laid off workers with the new full time goal of dismantling internet censorship in China. I for one would welcome WWIII at their hands.
This is much better than just censoring content. This goes to show what all companies doing business in China can expect. This kind of anti-chinese information just can't be made-up. I wonder what company will be next to pull out of China?
I believe their propaganda machine is strong enough, it doesn't need overdrive for little disturbances like this. It smoothed out, tidied up national memories of Tiananmen, something like this is peanuts compared to that.
their uncensored Hong Kong-tbased google.com.hk servers
If I know anything about genetics there must be some adenine base servers directly opposite these servers. Can they start redirecting traffic there?
[emphasis converted to italic]
FTFY.
$ make available
Really? I can think of two big ones, off hand.
American Revolutionary War
American Civil War
There've also been a great deal of smaller-scale rebellions involving labor unions, which have been the direct cause of the creation of new laws, over the decades. Now, we haven't gone all out as the French have done, and gone so far as to drag our ruler out of his home to chop his head off with a heavy, keen-edged blade, but that's partly because we have laws in place to depose our president if he screws up too bad, and also because any conflict that headed in that direction was stopped before that result came about.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
Ever since I watched Tiananmen in horror, I have tried to boycott China. That boycott has failed miserably.
I just fixed my brakes last Saturday. I literally tried every auto parts store in town. I could not find rotors not manufactured in China, not in my town on a day's notice. I have no doubt I could have gotten some mail-order, but not in time to get to work on Monday and still keep my job.
I bought a camping knife as a present from Buck Knives, a "Made in the USA" company last year. Despite the advertising claims, the knife came stamped "Made in China."
I bought a set of Carhartt work clothes last year, another "Proudly made in America" company. They arrived with manufacturing defects. Did some checking, sure enough, Carhartt is moving it's manufacturing to China.
I got so fed up when a 14mm wrench snapped in my hand last year I was ready to cough up for Snap-On tools. Guess where Snap-On is moving their manufacturing?
Even the "proud-to-be-an-American-we-support-the-troops" redneck favorite companies Spyderco pocketknives and Surefire flashlights are moving to China.
Neal Stephenson was prophetic. The only thing we know how to make in this country any more are pizzas and movies.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
hey might just wait for him to die and then overthrow the government.
I dunno about that... when Kim Il-Sung died in 1994 and his son Kim Jong-Il took over there was no overthrow of the government - No rumblings of any kind...
The majority of the 'masses' are doing just fine and are about as interested in lining the 'government' up as they were before this whole brouhaha
The majority of the masses always are. Most revolutions have been lead by a dissatisfied middle class, not by the peasants revolting. The peasants are too busy staying alive to think of rebellion. The middle class in China has grown a lot over the last few years, which makes the current regime's position more fragile.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The key is you have to keep most of the people relatively satisfied. Based on latin american dictatorships, if you can maintain a base of 30% that actively supports you, plus another 50% that is indifferent, then you can maintain power, even if the remainder are dying miserable deaths.
Qxe4
I just read in the NZ Media that Bill Gates will be building Nuclear plants in the near future.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Interesting how closely the US Government backs Google in this dispute. They recently stated that this shows it is too difficult to do business in China. Clearly just propaganda as this dispute has nothing to do with difficulty doing business, Google are immaturely pushing a political agenda or a PR stunt and were already able to comply with the Chinese laws. I don't consider Google a force for good in the free world, quite the opposite.
Can you make this a car analogy?
disgace. Google have still not provided any evidence, have not withdraw the allegation or apologized to the Chinese government, yet they charge on causing damage. There should really be a law against what Google are doing, certainly not socially acceptable.
Only if you promise not to shoot parent on a hunting trip.
I'll give it a shot: Many new cars have a computer chip or circuit of some sort that's installed at the factory which imposes a limit on the maximum speed of the car. While the car could be capable of speeds in excess of 150 MPH, it might be limited to 120. Now, if you weren't aware of this fact, you probably wouldn't even notice, because you wouldn't drag race your car to see that it's only hitting 120. Given the knowledge that there's an artificial limitation on your car's speed, you might look into methods of bypassing the chip.
Learn something new.
Kim Il-Sung is still the de jure leader of the country. He's either the President of the communist party, or head of the cabinet, or both. Yes, North Korea has a corpse as a leader, and the North Koreans don't see that as a strange concept.
Learn something new.
China has worked out how to be protectionist without being provably protectionist to the WTO. So, rather than offer an (illegal) export subsidy to it's manufacturers, it lowers its currency by regulation to give the same mathematical effect without allowing retaliation from other WTO countries. Rather than applying illegal tax or tariff penalties on foreign corporation, it uses clandestine hacking attempts, trumped up charges tried in closed courts (eg, Rio Tinto), and creates an environment where anybody could be arrested at any time at the government's whim, to make life uncomfortable for foreign corporations on its shores, while cosseting its own companies that have close ties to the government.
And, sadly, Obama, Brown, and other western leaders just play along, making comments like "we mustn't go down the seductive but damaging path of protectionism", not realising that their largest trading partner has already run gleefully down the path of protectionism and the west has just been too blind to notice.
We make and manage information.
I bought a camping knife as a present from Buck Knives, a "Made in the USA" company last year. Despite the advertising claims, the knife came stamped "Made in China."
They meant that the box it came in was made in the USA...
I've been buying Seagate Hard Drives since my first add-on 50MB hard-drive in my 386. Some of the really old ones were actually made in Japan (weird, huh?) and almost all of the new ones, even my 1TB drive were made in Thailand. Never had even 1 fail on me. I ordered a pair of 2TB drives... they came stamped "made in china"... both have already failed and I'm waiting on a replacement.
Are workers in China really that much cheaper than workers in Thailand?!?!?
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Also known as producing and shuffling paper. :-)
But seriously, I've heard your argument since 1975. "We're losing the low-value grunt work. The high-dollar brain work will still be here."
Except it didn't work out like that. We lost manufacturing. We've also lost research. The simple fact is when you're facing a labor pool of four billion desperate people with little-to-no-civil-rights and the same genetic possibilities as you, you're not going to compete on quality alone.
Your argument -- "They ain't never gunna be as smart as we are" -- has already been put to the test. It failed. The opposing viewpoint -- "It's a race to the bottom" -- has already been proven.
I'm just hoping we can pull up short of impact.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
So it comes down to doing the right thing or going for the money.
My Guess in the long run, bad for Google. China will at some point of time outstrip the US, specially when they don't open up their markets for example the pegged rmb. Some company will fill the gap in China and they will grow bigger than Google. Look at the telco how big are they :)
This presumes that India take quite a while to come on line - which it looks like they are slow to get the ball rolling.
But cudos to Google, they are doing the right thing which is why I would/do buy from google. and why I feel like I can trust google, keep it up guys you have my support :)
I consider that in no government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. If a sovereign oppresses his people to a great degree, they will rise and cut off his head. There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.
I'm wondering how many millennia of human history dispute that claim.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Google? eh, so what.. can't we just use another search engine and another adwords provider? .. oh, thats right... everyone else went out of business...
The trouble with google (and microsoft) is that they're "too big to fail". Can you imagine a world where microsoft or google closes their doors? what would happen? will they need to bail them out some 20 years from now, after google is running every "e"-thing?
We need about 200 search engines, let China keep up with that...
I work for a company (kinda, I work for a manufacturer's agent) that recently moved its factories from New Zealand to China. The prices for the goods have dropped 50% as a result, however, the quality has dropped more than 50%. The rangehoods they make don't extract as much from the air, not nearly as much. But at the end of the day, consumers only really care about price. And cheap goods is what China's good at.
Don't forget apple juice. The last time I went to America I purchased apple juice for my children, and promptly threw it away when I noted the juice was made from Chinese apples. The juice was branded Disney by the way. Actually my last experience in America I intend to keep my last - it's going down hill and it's extremely depressing that countries like China are on the rise against that.
Japan makes very good hard drives, the Seagate drives you owned were probably re-branded Hitachi drives.
Nice opportunity for Microsoft and Yahoo to show how much committed to freedom of information they are. Lets keep our eyes open and see whether MS/Yahoo/Nokia will react. Whether they will pick up the mobile contracts or not.
This is just going to be a back and forth thing. I don't think this battle over censorship is going to go anywhere. Google is losing it's China market, and, well, China is still going to be censoring everything.
We make and manage information.
Unless it's pure science, information and knowledge aren't worth much without some practical application. Traditionally, this resulted in a manufactured product--faster hard drive, better LED lights, improved engines, a new medicine.
More recently, products are a little less tangible--software, applications, entertainment.
Funny thing is, information is easier to copy than physical products. If the only thing you produce other than military hardware is "information" (i.e. intellectual property) and you're indebted to a country who doesn't care at all about your laws protecting IP, *and* you've outsourced most of your manufacturing, *and* the IP driving that is available to local workers who may or may not steal it to get a payout higher than the little you're paying them, you don't have a very rosy future.
Worth remembering that most people in early-to-mid USSR believed all that, too.
with China?
Fuck China. Why Chinese people allow for this kind of oppression to exist is beyond me...
If our own government wasn't bought and paid for by our own corporate interests, we'd be telling China to go fuck themselves in a number of areas.
2010-03-24 11am gmt+8 (beijing time), google.cn continues to redirect to google.com.hk. From Shanghai ADSL, a request for "tian an men" on google.com.hk is not blocked (in chinese or english), doing the same request on images.google.com.hk shows that famous photo of the student blocking the tank. I wonder what request exactly is blocked here!
This seems like a back room deal. Google unfilters (and moves to Hong Kong, which is still China), and China blocks traffic to the main land as it so decides with its great firewall.. the net result is the same as before and both sides win.
http://www.hawknest.com/
is working fine this morning of Wednesday 24th (using China Unicom 3G), not sure what drugs the OP is on...
They will follow our laws, or they won't be doing business in our country. If they want to leave their 30% market share behind, don't let the door hit you on the way out. Baidu has the other 70% and will gladly take the 30%.
If they want to holler "human rights" and make up random junk about hackers, then they can GTFO. We will not knuckle under to a foreign corporation and give them extraterritoriality. The time for that has passed by more than 60 years.
Almost certainly false
Almost certainly true, which is why I qualified my remark with "if we get sufficiently worked up about it". The reality is that life in America hasn't gotten bad enough yet, for enough of us. That will change eventually, however. My point is still valid: our legal system does, in fact, permit us to make changes but only if we make the effort.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Just day's ago the Chinese government were criticizing Google that they were linked together with the US government, and took their decisions from them.
At the end of the day though, it's plain for all to see how the corporate China takes direction from the Chinese government, and really China's distrust of Google on this just comes from the experience within itself.
cfm.
The only thing we know how to make in this country any more are pizzas and movies.
Considering that Movies can be offshored pretty easily, even Movies won't last forever.
Neal Stephenson was prophetic. The only thing we know how to make in this country any more are pizzas and movies.
And I am not that sure about the quality of the movies, either... :-)
1) The Chinese government did nothing. The HK version of Google (as all non CN versions) have always been keyword censored. Nothing new here.
2) Google never seriously expected to be allowed to operate uncensored. It makes no sense for Google to be uncensored if the resulting websites are still blocked.
3) Censorship in China is slowly lifted as more people become tech savvy and wealthy allowing them to bypass blocks. Commercial VPN services are rarely blocked, unless they give out free account which reach a too wide audience too fast. I you've ever been to China, you know that dropping censorship overnight is like handing knifes to toddlers. Censorship has to come down, and it will, but it's not something you can expect to do overnight with a population that has been censored and programmed since birth.
Love all the talk about China and its filters... Hmmm... I remember reading somewhere that our wonderful 'free' and democratic government in Australia is looking at introducing the same thing. I wonder how long it will take for Google and good ol' Oz to have a falling out?
I think the 'solution' is simple: In US and EU, start blocking incoming http requests from China. Let them suffer from not being able to access the information on the internet. Start blocking facebook, wikipedia, youtube, yahoo, live, blogger, msn, twitter, wordpress, amazon, myspace, microsoft, bing, ebay, linkedin, rapidshare, craigslist, imdb, bbc, orkut, cnn.... need I go on?
Satellite signals are quite easily jammed as was demonstrated lately with gps.
As far as I know, google makes money with ads, and porn based ads are what we see most often. The matter here is that China government censors porn, and google can't publish porn based ads, so they left using the hack as an excuse, and will come back when China goverment allows porn. In the end, ABBA is always right ( you know : money, money, money...).
I have an idea! Let's outsource even more of our manufacturing and engineering to China. Once we've exported away the little advantages we still have, China can become the dominant world power and I'm sure they'll act responsibly then.
The earth is trembling. I bet those Luddites at Google didn't think of that! Ha! Distinguished engineer Ken, changed the CS world with his buddy Dennis, but I bet he didn't see this coming!
Kidding aside, grab a deck chair and enjoy -well, appreciate- the spectacle unfold.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
The US banks are very efficient. They can have their cake and eat it too. Huge bonuses when they speculate wildly with the funds of customers. Then huge bonuses when they efficiently get a huge bail out.
From the banks point of view, this is efficiency.
It is very efficient that crocodiles get a healthy meal twice a year during the migration. Problem is that you are the buffalo being dragged to a watery death. Efficiency sucks when it happens to you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That war between google and China is non-sense... it does too much favor a company that sells locked-closed sources operating systems. Fishy. Are they behind all this?
So if the Chinese don't care about the environment, why do they invest so much in solar panels?
And it is a bit rich coming from an American who consume far more then anyone else on this planet, to complain about another country. Americans complaining another country polutes. That is like the pot made of dark matter and boiling sulfu complaining the shiny new, mirror finished sun powered kettle is black.
China pollutes to be sure, but America does NOT have the moral upper hand here. It is like a rapist complaining that I didn't hold open the door for a woman.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I think Google should retaliate by filtering China!
So whenever anyone tries to search for anything about Chinese companies, Chinese manufacturing or Chinese products, it's filtered...
Someone should make a page like RIAA-radar making a huge database of everything you can buy and indicating if it is "Chinnese-free".
I know your sentiment... it has happened to me in a similar way. I went to a Mexican crafts market (and when I say market it is the street-kind of-market and not walmart or similar) looking to buy some typical stuff to get some friends in Germany (where I am living now) and to my surprise, a lot of the textiles people where selling had a "made in china" label, although the styles *where* the same as the typical Mexican stuff. That made me really sad.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
so your government takes ILLEGAL action. I don't see that this makes much difference, except to be hypocrisy. Any government official arrested for illegal wiretaps yet, for example?
Sometimes it takes a thousand years but history begs to differ change WILL COME
Kind of funny how the 'free-est" country on Earth also has the most prisoners per capita.
You must be female. All males, upon first entering a new car, take it to the nearest open strait away and "tap out" the car. When you hit the rev limiter you become disappointed and look for the mod chip to remove that nuisance.
But look at -what- the Chinese government are censoring. Terms like the Tienanmen Square massacre where people died, that can certainly spark protests. Religion is censored, and as we know from history even small differences can lead to large problems.
People would and have risked their lives in the name of religion. People have and would risk their lives in support of those who they believe died for a worthy cause.
If it stayed like this, I doubt it would inspire revolutions. But with all of the talk about it, it is going to make people wonder -what- they are censoring. When they figure out what, they won't understand why. When they finally understand why they will see that the Chinese government is corrupt.
Think about it this way, if you don't know about curse words, there is no need to look them up. But how many of us once our parents told us that one word was a "bad word" tried to look it up in the dictionary? None of us would look it up otherwise, but once we know that it is "forbidden" knowledge we will look it up. The Chinese government and Google are effectively telling us that there -are- "curse words" tempting some of the citizens to look it up.
I forget where I saw/read this, but someone was able to interview quite a few young to middle aged Chinese people, and asked them questions like, "do you know what happened in T. Square", etc...
Very few of them knew, and most importantly, very few of them cared. I think you overestimate the desire of the average person to truly dig deep and find the truth beyond what is fed to them.
Heck, even in our "open information" society in the USA, look at how much misinformation was slung about and still believed to this day about health care reform? The vast majority of Americans who actually even bother to watch the news, watch Fox and do no further research.
They have complete isolation (embargoed against most western countries, no internet, no outside TV/radio) and honestly believe the propaganda.
Or is that just what they want you to believe...
Great article