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China Blocks WhatsApp

nytimes.com

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Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#581

Post by IncRnd »

chaostheory wrote: post #576
IncRnd wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, the comment does say China lacks innovation. > The end result is that China's fate as being relegated to being the world's giant copy machine is sealed unless things revert Why do you think that China has "fear of 'inferior' outside competition"?

No the comment says China WILL lose its current momentum for innovation. It’s a prediction of the future It’s pretty evident China fears outside competition when they block competitors from entering their market. They have no confidence in their home grown companies surviving contrary to hard evidence

You assume facts not in evidence and write as if your biases are evident as the truth.

China has a history of blocking outside influence in order to control the populace, so fear of competition with apps may not be the motivation.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#582

Post by inimino »

usaar333 wrote: post #432
inimino wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue that Google's products for photos, email, maps/navigation, video conferencing, and translation -- all blocked in China -- exceed that of any competitor, Chinese or otherwise I'd be interested to hear why you think so. As far as I know none of these are better than their Chinese counterparts in any meaningful way. (Competition isn't the right word as these are different markets.) Baidu Translate is at leas…

> VC This was really striking to me how bad Chinese-based ones were (which got me thinking about this issue). The QQ client doesn't even seem to work when I attempt to visit the international one; WeChat lacks a webapp with VC, has no Linux desktop app and the Windows desktop app I used had rendering difficulties with the self pip screen -- far worse experience compared to Skype and Google Hangouts. > Baidu translate…

> VC

Consumers have an app in their pocket that has everyone they know in it and can make a video call with two taps.

For corporate video conferencing there are paid solutions just like everywhere else.

So a free desktop app like Skype for video conferencing has no appeal.

> Baidu

The Baidu translate app has all those features and even a mini app for conversations in a walkie-talkie-like mode.

> Maps

You can set a future time for routing by public transit, and the real-time routing is pretty good. It doesn't try to predict road traffic conditions in the future. If Google has that feature I'd be curious how useful it is.

> Email

Big companies that have email have email systems. There's no demand for widespread public free email accounts because the public has no interest in email unless it's the only option.

I think the issue here is that it's easy to look at the features you use like Hangouts or Gmail calendar integration and think that Google is "ahead" technically. But in the Chinese market, the same needs are met in different ways by different products on a different mix of devices. So the features that you look at as "missing" haven't been developed because the market just doesn't care about them, not because Chinese internet giants lack the technical chops. They don't.

I think the way to look at it is not who is ahead, but that these are different markets with different values and the products look quite different, but you can't easily compare them by checking off features.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#583

Post by ahassan »

computerex wrote: post #371
bamboozled wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems strict but maybe it's sensible from a security standpoint. Why should a foreign country like China allow foreign owned mass-surveillance systems like Google and Facebook spy on their citizens? I mean even countries in the EU are taking Facebook to court over unauthorised online tracking of citizens [1]. The only difference with China is they have the power to do something about it, which is skip the legislat…

> I disagree with censorship of this kind; However, I wonder how the US would like it if the shoe was on the other foot? Here's a list of websites blocked in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_C... They block Wikipedia. Hardly a mass-surveillance system. The Chinese government is neanderthal.

Kind of off-topic, but I wonder what the reasoning behind blocking some sites like Sony Japan was.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#584

Post by bogomipz »

chaostheory wrote: post #40

What the long-term effects will be: China's ruling class further cement their power at the cost of China's innovation and future growth. Interesting and useful things are made when people able share and consume information. e.g. Jack Ma's US visit exposed him to Yahoo. Ma Huateng was clearly inspired by his exposure to ICQ. The list goes on. The same thing happens in the West but it happens a lot more often since the…

>"What the long-term effects will be: China's ruling class further cement their power at the cost of China's innovation and future growth.

They are are the bread basket of the Western tech world's hardware though. Does anyone else have the facilities and expertise to churn out that hardware that the dominant West tech giants rely on? Couldn't you argue that they are already innovating?

With Huawei, Xiaomi and BBK they don't need the West's hardware designs. And being able to cherry pick successful ideas of the West's tech companies they have the best of both worlds. And with a population of over a billion people it seems like the West's tech giants need them more than the other way around. I am not saying I agree with their polices just that I don't see how they don't find those policies concerning.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#585

Post by inimino »

ernst_klim wrote: post #516
inimino wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue that Google's products for photos, email, maps/navigation, video conferencing, and translation -- all blocked in China -- exceed that of any competitor, Chinese or otherwise I'd be interested to hear why you think so. As far as I know none of these are better than their Chinese counterparts in any meaningful way. (Competition isn't the right word as these are different markets.) Baidu Translate is at leas…

>Baidu Translate is at least as good as Google Translate >Как мне пройти на улицу кораблестроителей? Google: >How do I get to the shipbuilders' street? Baidu: >how can i go to the street considered for that? Fuck this crap, even yandex translate is much better.

It's better for Chinese, in my experience. Between Russian and English, perhaps not.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#586

Post by bad_user »

yeukhon wrote: post #361
bad_user wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With WhatsApp having over 1 Billion daily active users [1], I find that really hard to believe, but assuming that all of China's population is on WeChat ... My point is that WeChat does not exist for me and probably never will. [1] https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000631/Connecting-One-Billion-Us...

The last bothers me. It sounds like you invalidate his/her comment because you don't use it. WeChat is definitely more Chinese-speaking population dominant, but not necessarily just users in China. This is a massive network.

No, I'm using me as an example, the point being that the Chinese market is a bubble at least when speaking of Internet services.

What this means, for one, is that there is no cooperation or interoperability and these policies of the Chinese government are to blame.

From the sources available online WeChat's userbase is 90% Chinese. [1] So it might be a massive userbase, but it's not diverse.

Ask yourself this: would WeChat be successful if it weren't for the Chinese government favoring it, even going so far as to ban alternatives or worse?

Maybe, but maybe not, we'll never know, but products like WeChat are definitely not the result of free market competition in an international context.

If you know my phone number, you can contact me on WhatsApp. But you can't contact me on WeChat, because I'm not using WeChat, because I'm not living in China to be forced to use it and so the opportunity for a Chinese to contact me isn't there and I'm not going to install WeChat just because I might get contacted by a Chinese (there's always email).

Of course, in the future I myself would likely be interested in doing business in China, so I might end up wanting to talk with WeChat users.

But seeing such developments by the Chinese government is to me a strong signal that China is not a good place to do business. It might be for huge companies like Apple which have infinite resources, but as a small guy I couldn't bring myself at the moment to phantom developing a product, or delivering services to the Chinese market given that it's definitely not a free market.

So no matter how you look at it, the Chinese government has been maintaining an information bubble, keeping such products as WeChat tied to the Chinese market.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/wechat-breaks-700-million-mon...

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#587

Post by TylerE »

nradov wrote: post #574
TylerE wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's more like the US market of 20 or 30 years ago. They sell lots of Buicks.

I was referring to general vehicle size and configuration preferences, not specific brands.

The best sellings cars are mostly mid-size sedans and minivans. That's the American market circa 1992 or so.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#588

Post by FabHK »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #546
elefanten wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This claim gets made a lot, especially by China's government in it's "four great modern inventions" marketing campaign. [1] I don't get it. None of those are Chinese inventions. They're all technologies China adopted really fast. It's a testament to market size, development speed and certain idiosyncrasies about Chinese demographics, etc. But it has nothing to do with invention or innovation. [1] http://www.chinadail…

Remember that comment, because it applies even better to everything e.g. Apple or Uber, notoriously "innovative" companies, are doing.

Indeed. Remember the infamous comment by CmdTaco on slashdot when Apple released the iPod:

> No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#589

Post by NicoJuicy »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #503
NicoJuicy wrote: post #500

I'm seriously wondering why we open up our markets to China, if they won't ever allow our companies to thrive there. They shouldn't be allowed to take over companies too.

Many of our companies do thrive in china, and the rich people in the USA make lots of money off the arrangement. Don't think for a second that the relationship is one sided. Still, china could be a bit more fair and symmetrical in our trading relationship.

Perhaps you are not aware of how hard it is to get your money out of China.

And others end in 'partnerships'

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#590

Post by stale »

ernst_klim wrote: post #516
inimino wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue that Google's products for photos, email, maps/navigation, video conferencing, and translation -- all blocked in China -- exceed that of any competitor, Chinese or otherwise I'd be interested to hear why you think so. As far as I know none of these are better than their Chinese counterparts in any meaningful way. (Competition isn't the right word as these are different markets.) Baidu Translate is at leas…

>Baidu Translate is at least as good as Google Translate >Как мне пройти на улицу кораблестроителей? Google: >How do I get to the shipbuilders' street? Baidu: >how can i go to the street considered for that? Fuck this crap, even yandex translate is much better.

The k in the street name needs to be capital K.
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