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Google Outage Shows Risk of Doing Business In China
Hugh Pickens writes "The WSJ reports that widespread disruptions to Google in China over the weekend, halting use of everything from Google's search engine to its Gmail email service to its Google Play mobile-applications store, underscore the uncertainty surrounding Beijing's effort to control the flow of information into the country, as well as the risks that effort poses to the government's efforts to draw global businesses. The source of the disruptions couldn't be determined, but Internet experts pointed to China's Internet censorship efforts, which have been ratcheted up ahead of the 18th Party Congress. 'There appears to be a throttling under way of Web access,' says David Wolf, citing recent articles in foreign media about corruption and wealth in China spurred by the party congress and the fall of former party star Bo Xilai, 'that's their primary concern, people getting news either through Google or through its services.' Beijing risks a backlash if it were to block Google outright on a long-term basis, says Wolf and such a move could put Beijing in violation of its free-trade commitment under the World Trade Organization and make China a less-attractive place to do business. 'If China insists in the medium and long term of creating another Great Firewall between the China cloud and the rest of the world, China will be an increasingly untenable place to do business.'"
10:58AM Nice copy paste bro!
to do business?
really?
since when do we CARE ONE BIT about freedom when it comes to the almighty dollar?
we'll be in china even if they start executing puppies and kittens in the streets.
there is nothing in this world that will cause western capitalism to turn its back on china.
stop acting like we have any morals here. we don't. we worship money and anything that gets in its way we will stomp on.
other than that, we could really care less what they do. and they care less about what we do.
as long as money flows, the guys who run things are happy to eat popcorn on the sidelines and watch the world burn.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
China lacks rule of law, it only has rule of the rulers.
Thats the big problem with doing business in China, there is no actual Rule of law.
Test your net with Netalyzr
... the point is that China isn't adhering to the free trade treaties they've signed by blocking companies possibilities to do business on a whim.
you see - it's NOT in the law that you can't use Google in China. it's just that they decided to block it for some time now, purely on gut feeling. no laws, no courts, just random decisions.
that's pretty much why it's risky to do business in China and other random dictatorialships in general like Russia. You run immense risks of your business being taken away on a whim. That's also why some places have really hard time attracting investment money despite possibilities for good profits from business, as those places have a really poor track record of having consistent application of law which is pretty much a requirement if you don't want to gamble with your business.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
What was the purpose of your rant? Your first sentence is about being blocked in China and it was a general blanket statement.
The following 5 paragraphs have absolutely NOTHING to do with being blocked. Only a tangent about Google not being popular in other random countries. Are you actually trying to relate Google being blocked with their lack of popularity or was this just a springboard to bitch about unrelated things?
New account, two posts. Very little on topic content
What we have here is a shill. Moderators were fooled.
It was a mass DNS poisoning for the outage in China, at least for me. All subdomains on google.com were deliberately resolved to some random IP allocated to South Korea, and a hosts file quickly fixed it.
I ask because unlike other 'major' western democracies, the UK has no written constitution and its doing well.
So again I ask: Should China have the "rule of law", just because some western countries have it?
Let's remember that it's one thing to have rules and it's another to actually follow them. Some governments in the west have ignored their own rules too. Just saying.
I know it's cliche to call 'shrill' around here, but... it is no secret that the Chinese government employs an army of propagandists, mostly part-timers, with the job of patroling the internet looking for Chinese blogs and discussion forums and defending the government from criticism. I am not aware if they extend the program to English-language sites, but if they do, the above post is exactly what I would expect them to post. Some of those lines, like 'This includes abiding Chinese laws if you want to do business there,' are straight out of the government policy and perfectly echo previous statements by officials on such matters.
The fact is, Google is not struggling because the Great Firewall or because the government makes competition hard. Google is struggling on their own regards and only by themselves. They seem not to be able to justify their existence in China and doesn't seem to offer Chinese citizens what they want.
Hmm, it only takes one paragraph to tell that you're talking out of your ass. Have you ever tried to use any Google service from China? Do you have the faintest idea how long does it take to load one page of search results, or how often does the Wall reset all connections to Google from your IP for one full minute, for some censorship filter was triggered by the most ordinary and unoffensive search terms? And these things are not exactly good for business.
I suppose this is just another thing that needs to be repeated until it is generally accepted. You know, kind of like "smoking is bad for you and everyone around you."
There are ample examples of how doing business in China have turned really bad on all scales. It is especially obvious when heavy tech such as aircraft and train manufacturing have been screwed over by the promises of the Chinese government which were later revoked causing amazing damage to the companies who put their faith in what they were told.
We all want to have those WalMart prices in everything we buy. Lower costs of everything from materials and manufacturing to labor and delivery are things we ALL want. But there are risks and I measure those risks with every transaction I make on eBay. (And I am talking about pennies, not billions of dollars.) The risk is heavy on my mind always. But then again, it's the question of risk isn't it?
These days, whether people realize it or not, but the risk to business has largely been shifted to employees and the general population. When things fail or go badly, who feels the pinch worse? The people on wall street or the people on the street? Somehow, we got to a place where risk is socialized and rewards are privatized.
So yeah.... there is risk to doing business with china, but the risk is socialized... it's on all of us and we have little we can say or do about it.
You have to abide laws everywhere in the world. This includes abiding Chinese laws..
Right; so how about: The Chinese government starts following Chinese law, in particular article 35 or the Chinese constitution which says:
or this:
And how about, companies like Microsoft, Cisco and so on, start obeying Chinese law by treating those that break that article of the constitution as criminals and stop doing business with them?
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Mod parent up. All this also applies to users who buy stuff from stuff made in China, which is about everybody.
If you think enough people are willing to buy only American (or European or whatever) start a company that does just that and become rich. Unfortunately you will fail, because not enough people care.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Troll moderation is SO unfair...
Nothing forces a corporation to uphold the rights of ANYONE without some outside influence. If they can game the system they'll do it.
It's not "towed" the line. It's not a rope. The phrase is "toed" the line, as in, someone drew a line in the sand and you are sticking your toe across the line, challenging them.
Battlemaster--Game with friends in medival realms
They're just degrading service, rather than blocking it. If you degrade service, people will naturally move away because they will think it is the service's fault, not the government's fault.
The phrase is "toed" the line, as in, someone drew a line in the sand and you are sticking your toe across the line, challenging them.
Close. Toeing the line means you keep your ties right at the line without crossing it, thus you are specifically obeying all of the rules and not challenging authority.
Chinese gov. is counting on businesses being lead by short-thinking greedy fools. Look at Trans-Mag, Germany's cool and innovative mag-lev. China agreed to buy it and gave assurances that their tech would not be stolen. To assure that, Germany had posted guards at various locations to stop China from entering. Then China simply sent in the red army, forced the doors open and allowed a number of engineers/academia's to look over the tech. As such, China is now developing a number of new low-cost mag-levs based on Germany's approach.
Boeing and Airbus have been FOOLISH in allowing China to do various parts of planes. Sadly, Boeing gives one part of a plane to China and buys Boeing. But then China approached Airbus and says that if you will give us a different part from an airbus plane, then we will put that plane on the approved list. IOW, Chinese gov. is making sure that they get access to ALL of the tech because so many western companies think short-term.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Probably because most people won't know how to fix it.