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Microsoft Partners With Baidu, China's Top Search Engine
countertrolling writes with news that Microsoft has struck an agreement with Baidu.com, the most popular search engine in mainland China, to provide results for English-language queries. From the NY Times:
"Baidu, which dominates Chinese-language search services here with about 83 percent of the market, has been trying for years to improve its English-language search services because English searches on its site are as many as 10 million a day, the company said. Now it has a powerful partner. 'More and more people here are searching for English terms,' Kaiser Kuo, the company’s spokesman, said Monday. 'But Baidu hasn’t done a good job. So here’s a way for us to do it.' Baidu and Microsoft did not disclose terms of the agreement. But the new English-language search results will undoubtedly be censored, since Beijing maintains strict controls over Internet companies and requires those operating on the mainland to censor results the government deems dangerous or troublesome, including references to human rights issues and dissidents."
Compliance isn't an excuse for assisting China. But what's a few dead, organ-harvested people under the bridge who voiced their opposition to the company town?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"Baidu Bing"... get it?
I just can't be bothered.
... Microsoft uses it's massive operating system/business software profits to buy it's way into yet another market.
If one is to believe that our world is interconnected, then it only provides a model where liberty is granted only to the few who have the cash to purchase it - instead of providing it to all who seek it.
China is a case of why you don't simply just go for business friendliness, but freedom for all citizens without regard to involvement in commerce.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
When you deal with the Chinese, sooner or later they will backstab you.
And when you deal with Microsoft, sooner or later they will backstab you.
Who's going to reach for the knife first?
Circumcision is child abuse.
China will just reach for the gun and not bother with the knife. Then it'll harvest Microsoft for its IP and dispose of the rest.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
But what's a few dead, organ-harvested people under the bridge who voiced their opposition to the company town?
A business expense.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Microsoft search engine's name begins to make business sense...
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
So, what exactly have you done to not support Chinese? Do you buy products that have been only made and manufactured in the US, even if its higher price? Do you own iPhone or any other known mobile phone? Does any of your product read Made in China? Instead of blaming Microsoft for doing business with Chinese, what about you taking the first step?
That, or people in China speak Chinese.
A story about China? Somebody alert the jingoism brigade!
Yeah, let's go 5th-grade-lunch-room on a country with a few billion people, that's a good idea. CHINA YOU'RE A MEANIE SO YOU CAN'T SIT AT OUR TABLE
It's people like you that start wars. Idiot.
what about you taking the first step?
A good first step might for you to go to China and look for yourself.
It's not the hellhole some people try to portray it as being, and neither are all of it's factories sweatshops.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Two evils only make a good when you multiply, not add.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If they are going to censor, they might as well censor open source products and tools. After working in China, I find Baidu does a very bad job of supporting Chinese language documentation for open source. Many programmers in China are very badly trained because they have only used Windoz. They know how push buttons and drag and drop to make software. Some have no idea how to really write code.
1) Majority of the searches done in China will be in say.... Chinese....
2) The population of English speakers in China is about 10 million (based on wikipedia). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
No one outside of the Baidu management team actually believes that Baidu has anything like an 83% of the search market in China.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
We need to keep tabs on it in order to assess their qualification as an Emergency Fallback option when our native countries become too oppressive.
This is mostly directed toward the op that decided to write the stories summary...but here goes
I love how your phone is chinese, your clothes are chinese, your kitchen appliances are chinese and your furniture is chinese,
yet you still think after complacently bankrolling what american politicians still insist is a 'communist' state, that you're entitled to
any semblance of a dissenting opinion.
either take a real stand against the arguably communist empire you so openly support, or shut the hell up and buy another TV.
peppering your articles with sensationalist sentament about human rights in china makes no sense otherwise,
and its even more nonsensical when people realize you're american and living under the patriot act.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Interesting... though not as cool as what he did before. :)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
This situation reminds me of the buttered toast & cats approach to anti-gravity.. :-)
Insert
So, what exactly have you done to not support Chinese? Do you buy products that have been only made and manufactured in the US, even if its higher price? Do you own iPhone or any other known mobile phone? Does any of your product read Made in China? Instead of blaming Microsoft for doing business with Chinese, what about you taking the first step?
Yes, it is good to recognize that oneself plays a part as a cog in the machinery. As a wise man once said:
"Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! .)
Aaow!
(Yeah-Make That Change)
Gonna Make That Change . . .
Come On!
(Man In The Mirror)
You Know It!
You Know It!
You Know It!
You Know . . .
(Change . .
Make That Change. "
But, it is also unfortunately the case that us little consumers don't really run the world. You and I, individually, might be on top of things, at least a bit, using our purchasing power for good, but on the whole, the notion that consumers rule is false. Even if they technically might, we actually don't, because we buy what they tell us to buy (not you and me individually, but all of us in aggregate).
The consumerist, vote-with-your-wallet-perspective is often useful, but one should not neglect to also look at it from the perspective that maybe the rich and powerful actually are running the show. (Besides, they have very large wallets and some of them have very many guns, even).
It is convenient for the superpowers and mega-corps if we think consumers have the power. And we do. That's the ingenious bit. It's just that the rich and powerful pervert our potentially rational choices with marketing and through better access to mass communication than the little gal has.
In addition to voting with the wallet, people should, in my opinion, feel free to keep bitching on /. about the bad things the powerful countries and corporations do. Even if they can't be bothered to wean themselves completely from the convenience of the big cheap teat that is made in china, backed by tyranny and systematized greed.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
How many Chinese-language searches do you think you have in the US each day? Would be interesting, too, to see the number of English-language searches in Japan, say, or in Germany.
Most people, the world over, only ever see the part of the net that's in their own language. The idea of the net as a world-wide melting pot is pretty overstated. It's like a large cocktail party where everyone is in the same room, but clustered into separate groups that talk only to each other, mostly ignoring everyone else.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
but Microsoft and China in one discussion triggers all reflexes to recklessly troll around....
Cue a slew of comments about life in China from people who've never been there
Google pull out of China because censorship is evil, so in steps m$, the outfit Google coined their motto from originally. But wait ... m$ don't have a search engine of their own, so can the Google servers take the load from them merely throwing up a wrapper round theirs?
Google didn't have a problem with that until their servers got hacked.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/12/google-china-ends-censorship
N/T
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
While you are probably mostly correct about people only ever seeing the part of the net that is in their own language, I find a disproportionate number of the sites that I visit to be in English, German, and Japanese. The English part is easily explained (I'm an English speaker in an English speaking nation, who uses English services), but the German and Japanese part isn't so easy to explain. This leads me to believe that there are dominant languages on the net, English is one of the and that probably explains why Baidu wants to improve their English language results.
(To go to that cocktail party analogy, people mostly cluster according to their language but they use a dominant language when they want to talk to other clusters.)
The problem isn't China, it's the government. Refusing to buy Chinese products wouldn't help with their censorship, it would only leave their population poorer. But Microsoft is helping the censorship by complying with it, making it easier to enforce.
Dilbert RSS feed
Baidu Bing, Baidu boom!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
> > But what's a few dead, organ-harvested people under the bridge
> > who voiced their opposition to the company town?
>
> A business expense.
That depends upon how much you get for the organs, doesn't it?
Log in or piss off.
Do you mean Beijing or Redmond?
If one is to believe that our world is interconnected, then it only provides a model where liberty is granted only to the few who have the cash to purchase it - instead of providing it to all who seek it.
China is a case of why you don't simply just go for business friendliness, but freedom for all citizens without regard to involvement in commerce.
You must have missed the memo. Fascism is back in a big way - it's just that the government and industry traded places.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
So, what exactly have you done to not support Chinese? Do you buy products that have been only made and manufactured in the US, even if its higher price? Do you own iPhone or any other known mobile phone?
It wasn't any part of my decision to buy the phone, but HTC makes stuff in Taiwan (they are a Taiwanese company).
This sort of thing is the reason I was in favour of lawsuits against companies in the 80's and 90's who'd profited from slave labour back in WWII.
If US companies now sense that dealing with nasty totalitarian states can result in an expensive lawsuit in the future it might make them a bit more wary of doing it.
As for Microsoft I'm the odd situation of disliking them intensely now on slashdot long after it was fashionable to do so. Back in the days when most people here hated them I actually didn't really object to them so much.
Now it's like everything they announce is an attempt to troll me.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
So, Google's now going to be providing English search results for China?
Talk about going 5th grade, read your idiotic comment.
bing
As for Microsoft I'm the odd situation of disliking them intensely now on slashdot long after it was fashionable to do so.
On the bright side it means you may soon be able to get Google search results in China through Bing's innovative technology. ie copy paste.
Well, do you understand German or Japanese? Do you have a special interest (manga or anime for instance) that makes you seek out these foreign-language sites? In either case it makes you rather unusual.
Few people ever feel the need to talk to those other clusters. Few people have the ability, even if they wanted to. Most people do not speak any of the world languages as a second language after all. The few that can and want to connect with other webs - and they really are quite few - tend to act as bridges, filtering through the information that most people in their home cluster could find useful. When a weird video clip from Japan spreads through the US intartubes it arrives through a small number of people that do keep up with the Japanese web.
This lack of curiosity is natural. Much of the web really is local. It's about information that's really only useful for people from a specific region, country or even city. Even generic information has a surprising amount of locally specific components.
Japanese sites, Swedish sites and US sites about scuba diving, for instance, has a lot of information in common (I've been looking them up lately). But then, two talk in metric, the other in imperial units; recommended equipment may not have the same name or even be available in the other areas; local certification rules and regulations may differ; equipment for one area may be completely unsuitable for another; and any talk about specific diving schools, diving spots or interesting wildlife is of course completely local. As a result, I tend to mostly read Japanese sites as here's where I'll do most of my diving, even though I'm really more comfortable with both Swedish and English than with Japanese.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Through currency manipulation and buying our debt, the Chinese government is actually subsidizing the US; they are helping us buy their bullets at their own expense.
SSC
But, it is also unfortunately the case that us little consumers don't really run the world. You and I, individually, might be on top of things, at least a bit, using our purchasing power for good, but on the whole, the notion that consumers rule is false. Even if they technically might, we actually don't, because we buy what they tell us to buy (not you and me individually, but all of us in aggregate).
The consumerist, vote-with-your-wallet-perspective is often useful, but one should not neglect to also look at it from the perspective that maybe the rich and powerful actually are running the show.
No, nobody is running the show. This is what happens when a movie has no director. It could be worse; we could have a director with an absolute crap vision.
We CAN vote with our wallets, we CAN make a difference. Start with yourself. Then go convince two other people to do the same. Spend some actual time at it. If you succeed then you will have achieved more than you did when you changed your own habits.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"This sort of thing is the reason I was in favour of lawsuits against companies in the 80's and 90's who'd profited from slave labour back in WWII." Why stop at WW2? Why not go back to the south in the 1800's or back even further to the Roman Empire that was built by slave labor? How far into the past do we have to go to punish people today for something none of them had anything to do with?
Baidu Bing search: "Operating system"
1 result found.
Supporting China isn't necessarily a problem. I've done work for a Chinese manufacturer and I have no moral qualms about it. The difference is that they were an honest business. I wouldn't work for a Chinese company that actively engages in the censorship of the internet. That's a dishonest business.
This isn't a China = Bad issue. It's a censorship = Bad issue. Google had no problem doing business in China. They had a problem with censoring their search results.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
That, or people in China speak Chinese.
How about Mandarin or Cantonese?
Sorry, had to be pedantic.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
English is probably used to search for torrents
I'd love to buy North American goods but there are hardly any out there compared to "Made in China" goods. Finding stuff that is not made in China is actually pretty hard.
Someone should make a UPC scanner app that offers you "Made in XX" products as alternatives.
Yikes... that's pretty scary. On the other hand, at least they don't try to hide their censorship... they smack you in the face with it and if you don't like it, too damn bad.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Correct, people in China often speak one of the two major forms of Chinese.
This seems sufficiently apparent, I'm not exactly sure what's meant to be pedantic about it. Redundant might be a better word.
How far into the past do we have to go to punish people...
DNA can be thought of as just more cookies...but they only go so far. Do you know where your atoms have been?? Were you once part of a hostile volcano or an exploding star?
IBM sold their laptop division, now living through the Chinese brand Lenovo.
Maybe it's time for the search or better yet the OS portions of Microsoft to be sold too?
I'm not sure you understand doing business in China. The profits from the organ donations go to the party member (or occasionally directly to the branch). So do the contract payments. You just get the peace and security of knowing that the local Linux users won't want to start reverse engineering your protocols.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Would you support the middle east countries if they refused to sell us oil unless we allowed Sharia to be taught in our schools? After all they don't believe in separation of church and state and would consider it discrimination, so we should just comply, yes?
As much as I think the great firewall of China sucks it isn't the USA's job to tell others how to live and if the Chinese don't want it? Let them rise up and do something about it. Last I saw on it the people for the most part had bought it as a block on porn and the average Chinese was pretty complaisant about it.
So if you don't want to buy Chinese products because you don't support their policies? Good for you and I'm glad you are able to live without most electronics, same if you wish to do without products by any company that does business with China. But butting in and telling other countries how they should live has been the source of one clusterfuck after another when it comes to the USA, and I think frankly both we here in the USA and those in others countries would be much better off if we were to STFU and worry about our own affairs instead of every else's.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This leads me to believe that there are dominant languages on the net, English is one of the and that probably explains why Baidu wants to improve their English language results.
English is certainly one of the dominant languages on the Net, but so is Chinese. The reason why you don't usually get Chinese search results in your queries is because the writing system is completely different, and so you don't get accidental matches or near-matches on keywords.
i like China a lot, they are free of western hippie morals, what troubles me is microsoft getting the monopoly on english based searches ... can you see the duality, if not, goto your statement
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
As badly as they butcher English on signs, I'd wonder if they'd do the same in searches.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.