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Google Opens Asian Data Centers But Shuns China and India
judgecorp writes "Google has opened data centers in Singapore and Taiwan to serve the boom in Asian Internet users. But it canceled a $300 million data center project in Hong Kong to focus on the Taiwan site and the smaller one in Singapore. Officially the problem was lack of space in Hong Kong, but China's repressive attitude to the Internet (and the history of the Chinese hack on Gmail in 2010) must have contributed to the move."
This sounds like exactly the right move, except for maybe not being able to serve the Chinese market like they might have in Hong Kong.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
How can I quote "Do no evil" sarcastically? I need a different headline.
There literally isn't enough space.
Does that come with or without the NSA tap?
It's a good thing the US government hasn't done anything like that to Google, eh? Moral high ground, and all...
Do you honestly think you can determine the motives of a massive multi-national corporation based on a couple of news stories that were floating around a while ago?
Do you not think there might possibly a few other factors you don't have the first idea about?
Stupid editorializing like that is what you get when people put nationalism before human rights. The other side is always needing to be painted as worse than the home team to to keep the plebes in check.
This is probably going to sound really stupid, but imagine for a moment that you're a company called Loolge, and you've been court-ordered to allow your home government's security agency - let's call it the NAS - access to the vast archives of information you hold on your enormous international customer base. One day a large, rival nation - Nicha - hacks into your servers and gains access to some of that prized information.
Wouldn't the NAS mandate that you immediately and permanently stop doing business in Nicha, lest there be another breach?
I can think of a thousand holes in this but it kind of demonstrates how playing ball with someone like the NSA makes all Google's previous "do no evil" actions seem suspect.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
If the US can take a fibre copy of an entire Google data-centre/backup then so can any other country/organisation. That means that expect more than just the US having copies and keeping very very quiet about it. If they don't, then I am sure that certain countries are going "thats a good idea" and its a race between the Google team locking down their inter data center coms.
Any country that hosts a google datacentre and any fibre operator that has a managed service contract could be considered "compromised".
https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/
HK is a separate autonomous state. It has a separate border control and people basically live the free life over there.
Chinese oppressive government has got practically nothing to do with them. Speculating otherwise is just pure nonsense.
Baidu will not be crushed to hear of this.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
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The land value there is insane due to the population density.
Or is there some reason I'm missing why you would one of these in on of the most populated areas in the world?
Wouldn't the NAS mandate that you immediately and permanently stop doing business in Nicha, lest there be another breach?
Why would they? It would provide them a direct line to Chinese data.
Joe Sixpack needs to go to work, come home to supper, make love to his wife once a week, wax patriotic and believe there is some evil country out there he should be glad he doesn't hail from. Much like organized religion, it would seemingly occur to more folks that nationalism is a handy tool to keep the masses happy with their station.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Taiwan's political institutions are not tied to the People's Republic of China. They are remnants of the Nationalist government (KMT) after their defeat in the Civil War.
Hong Kong and Macau were both colonial outposts of Britain and Portugal respectively. These have been handled back to China and are government under a "One Country, Two Systems" approach, classifying them as Special Administrative Regions (SARs) each with a mini-constitution called the "Basic Law". In theory, a high degree of autonomy is guaranteed, but in practise, there is always political pressure being applied to intervene in all kinds of matters. A resident of the SAR has about the same rights as a person in North America or in Europe, and at least until now, the appearance normality has been maintained after the handover back to China.
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Did they lose another war? India. Falklands. Egypt/Arabia, Zud Afrika, and The Colonies, to name but a few. What's it got left colonywise?
Taiwan is not China. That is like saying that the USA is England.
This is incorrect -- Google pulled out of Mainland China, not Hong Kong. The author seems unaware, but Hong Kong has different laws from the Mainland, including data privacy and free speech. In fact, since Google pulled out of mainland China, www.google.cn actually shows a redirect link to www.google.com.hk .
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
As someone who currently lives in Hong Kong, the official explanation doesn't seem to be too far off. Space is very limited and *incredibly* expensive.
While we have free internet here and many people actually have a Google account, this is just not true for the mainland. China just does not depend on Google so much as the rest of the world. After having blocked access to some services every now and then in the past years, you now have most Chinese rely on domestic services instead of Google/Facebook & Co.
http://m.slashdot.org/story/195431
(If you didn't read the article, basically it's how the Indian Govt., seemingly in light of Nokia's purchase by deep pocketed Microsoft, has raised the amount of taxes due from $300M to $3B)
I have no problem with any country imposing whatever taxes they want on any foreign entity wanting to do business in their country. That's what comes with them being a "sovereign" state I guess. What's sure to drive businesses away (and will keep me from bringing my modest company there) is when they impose such taxes/restrictions RETROACTIVELY as was in this and other cases. That's not to mention the lack of infrastructure, corruption, nepotism, and poor education there. (I have just suffered personally from this, I was in Bangalore two days ago where I got serious food poisoning from a McDonalds, evidently some people are cutting corners or aren't properly trained/managed).
I'm sure Nokia is rueing the day they decided to build their manufacturing plant(s) there. While apologists for this may say it's probably just a negotiating tactic, there's another word for it: extortion.
Say what you will about the U.S. and other developed countries at least they pay lip service to the rule of (hopefully non-arbitrary) law for decades (or maybe centuries like in Switzerland). Seen in this light, perhaps Google's decision to likewise stay out of China is a bit less mysterious. A prominent Chinese professor was fired from a top ranked Chinese university for calling on the government to follow the Chinese Constitution and adhere to the rule of law. Evidently he didn't toe the government line (as announced by the newly installed, not elected premiere) that requiring the government to follow their own Constitution was a plot by the western powers to weaken China. (I believe the government didn't even pretend, as in other cases, that this professor was bad at his job; he received generally positive reviews from student evaluations. Of course even if he was terrible, tenure should allow him academic freedom to speak his mind but hey, this is China).
Instead the Chinese government reserves the right to arbitrary use of power. So if you were Google, would you put a substantial technological investment there?
Thank god that Google (Android), Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Intel, Cisco, AMD and I almost forgot Microsoft, are American companies. Can you imagine what the world would be like if China had the power the NSA has? (I guess ARM is not American but their British so that's close. And although I'm American, I'm not remotely white, can you tell by my username? :)
I assume Google is going to move its datacenters out of the US then, to protest the ongoing US government hacking that is going on?
Taiwan is China. It may be slightly more "independent," but it is still Taiwan, Republic of China, and doing business there still helps the Communist regime retain its grip on power and further destabilize the world economy.
Good Lord, you are an idiot.
Is this a joke? Does the person who wrote the summary even read Slashdot?
Officially the problem was lack of space in Hong Kong
...but let's just ignore that and come up with conspiracy theories.
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I believe them that space was the problem in Hong Kong. Expensive real estate there. My understanding is that the Chinese government does not meddle too much in the affairs of Hong Kong like they do on the Mainland.
That being said, I have a client that is trying to do business in China, and I can confirm that the Chinese government is a total pain in the ass about this. I'm not involved in the details, but basically, you need an e-commerce license that is insanely expensive to sell anything in the Chinese market, and it just wasn't worth it to them. The client has a presence in every other Southeast Asian country.
I imagine that the situation for Google is different, but anyway, I just thought I'd share for no reason since it's irrelevant to Hong Kong.
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Can you imagine what the world would be like if China had the power the NSA has?
They do, but the whistleblowers didn't make it.
I have just suffered personally from this, I was in Bangalore two days ago where I got serious food poisoning from a McDonalds
While one might argue that any food from McDonald's is poison, I'll be especially careful to avoid those restaurants in Maine. Who knew the northeast was such a pit?
The last company I was at consolidated their Asian data centers in Singapore, it's considered central to more Asian countries with fewer inter-Asian political issues to worry about. Open a data center in China and the Japanese will complain and vice versa whereas as nobody has a problem with Singapore. I would imagine that other companies do the same thing for similar reasons that have solely to do with politics than cost.
Sorry! Should have referred to it by its now reinstated original (?) name, Bengalaru. :)
I have absolutely nothing against McD. In fact I would dearly love to go to Maine to try McDonalds version of a Maine Lobster sandwich (no kidding, I saw it on the internet so it must be true). I wonder if they are still making it.
I read TFA. No mention of India either in the story, nor the above summary. Why mention India one way or another in the headlines, if the stories have nothing about it?
Reinstated? Names like Bengaluru, Chennai & Kolkata are Kannada, Tamil & Bengali translations of Bangalore, Madras & Calcutta. These name changes are as stupid as renaming Germany 'Deutschland' in English. Mumbai is a tad different, since the origins of that name and the name Bombay are different.
I can think of a thousand holes in this but it kind of demonstrates how playing ball with someone like the NSA makes all Google's previous "do no evil" actions seem suspect.
Only if Google has played ball with the NSA. AFAICT, there is not evidence of that. It appears that the NSA has spied on Google without Google's knowledge or participation, though.
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Hong Kong was not handed back to the People's Republic of China. It was handed over. Prior to 1997 it was never a part of the People's Republic of China.
Taiwan is China, just like your garage is part of your house.
Tip for healthy eating in the developing world. Stay away from places staffed by 19 year old high school dropouts who couldn't care less if their employer's reputation goes down the toilet (literally). That means hotels and chain restaurants. You're much better off at a roadside stall where the owner/operator's livelyhood depends on their reputation for cheap, great tasting food that doesn't make people sick.
just like your neighbor's garage is part of your house
LOL US idiots who killed everyone and stole the land from native the first place now think they are the icon and expert of freedom, yapping about land rights.
STFU until you idiots return Hawaii to the natives. Or stop sucking up to the Saudis who are beat women to death because they show their face on the street.
Okay enough is enough.. :/
The case against Nokia has been going on for a long time (over a year, if I remember correctly). It might be a shakedown attempt by the Indian Govt (I say this as an Indian citizen) in order to generate more revenue or line the pockets of the officials involved, but it is very unlikely that the MS - Nokia acquisition deal has anything to do with it.
It pains me to see the Indian government being given more credit than they should get. The government officials might be greedy and corrupt, but forward planning is definitely not one of their strengths..
Singapore has EXCELLENT coverage to all of Asia (sans West Asia). From Singapore you can easily serve content to both India and China (with http://cablemap.info/ to see the pipes going into and out of Singapore. In 2015, Singapore will gain improved connectivity to Australia (APX West). Taiwan is similarly situated, albeit further from India/Pakistan/etc.