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A new approach to China

googleblog.blogspot.com

11–20 of 392 posts

Re: A new approach to China

#11
post #4

It's easy to shut down the site when you are losing the search game to local competition. In any case, even though I find freedom of speech to be necessary and encouraged, I do not think that Google is right to imply in this blog post that the Chinese government is behind the attacks.

I do not think that Google is right to imply in this blog post that the Chinese government is behind the attacks.

Unless they have evidence to support that implication...

Re: A new approach to China

#12
post #4

It's easy to shut down the site when you are losing the search game to local competition. In any case, even though I find freedom of speech to be necessary and encouraged, I do not think that Google is right to imply in this blog post that the Chinese government is behind the attacks.

It's hard not to imply that.

Re: A new approach to China

#13
> We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn

Kudos to Google!

Amazing.

You work for a great company, Googlers!

Re: A new approach to China

#14
post #4

It's easy to shut down the site when you are losing the search game to local competition. In any case, even though I find freedom of speech to be necessary and encouraged, I do not think that Google is right to imply in this blog post that the Chinese government is behind the attacks.

Ya, true. Perhaps there is some other hand at play behind the scenes investing treasure in obtaining information on outspoken China human rights activists.

Re: A new approach to China

#15
post #4

It's easy to shut down the site when you are losing the search game to local competition. In any case, even though I find freedom of speech to be necessary and encouraged, I do not think that Google is right to imply in this blog post that the Chinese government is behind the attacks.

I do not think that Google is right to imply in this blog post that the Chinese government is behind the attacks. Unless they have evidence to support that implication...

Reading between the lines, that's exactly what I saw.

Re: A new approach to China

#16
post #4

It's easy to shut down the site when you are losing the search game to local competition. In any case, even though I find freedom of speech to be necessary and encouraged, I do not think that Google is right to imply in this blog post that the Chinese government is behind the attacks.

The targeting of Chinese human rights activists' email accounts don't seem Suspicious to you? Exactly what /private/ group would have motive for this?

Re: A new approach to China

#17

Every once in awhile their Don't be evil motto reminds us that it still exists. Reading in between the lines, it seems that they must feel that the Chinese government was involved in the attacks on the user accounts. Otherwise, the first portion of the post re: cyber security has little to do with the latter portion re: dealing with China at all. This is a fairly clever approach to conveying such a heavy message with…

Nobody does data mining better than good 'ole Google. If they went public with this post you can be sure there is more to it than what you're reading.

Re: A new approach to China

#18
post #3
post #2

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China. Wow.

They shouldn't have even opened an office in China. What the heck did they expect to happen?

In case you didn't know. Google is not a charity, but a business organization.

It would have been silly for them not to do business with China - when most western nations and companies does it. Some level of censorship does outweigh the benefits of having google.cn. But google being google, and perhaps the only company that has the balls to do this, will most likely pull out of china if they don't get their way.

I can't think of any other company doing this, the potential for business is incredible in china, which has more internet users than USA.

This is BIG.

Re: A new approach to China

#20
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They shouldn't have even opened an office in China. What the heck did they expect to happen?

They expected to do business, of course. It is, after all, a 1.32bn audience base. Quite glad they're opting to take the ethical route this time, though.

Well,the decision could also have been made along with the fact that they don't have a large user base. I am guessing "Baidu" is still pretty popular there. I wonder if they would have done the same if they had a 60% penetration in the Chinese market.

EDIT:

Why am I being downmodded ? I thought we are supposed to have open discussions here. (I did find the actual google mkt share in the TC blog later, but I was presenting an alternative reason along with the fact that their site was attacked)

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