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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.
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.
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?
Come on, who else is gonna do it? Yahoo? Altavista? Google won't because they aren't exactly on good terms with China what with the censorship and the hacking. This isn't a case of MS getting into a market by leveraging its monopoly powers -- it's a case of MS getting into a market by lacking the morals found in other companies. If you're gonna bash them, at least do it for the right reason.
That, or people in China speak Chinese.
Hahaha... Google and Yahoo are your shining examples? They were the first to bow down to China. (well, you sort of have a point about Altavista. I don't suppose Obsorne Computer doesn't do much business with China either)
Google might be on the outs with China lately, but that bad blood took some while to accrue.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
"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?