Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

#71

Post by jpollock » Sat, Nov 23, 2013, 10:35 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #59

jpollock wrote: post #39

Are you sure Google's big enough in China to have an impact? http://www.chinainternetwatch.com/4371/search-engine-market-... Even worse, that's by revenue, not searches: http://www.chinainternetwatch.com/3809/china-search-engine-m... 3% of search is a blip. [EDIT: Fixed the links mangled by cut-n-paste from other thread]

Did you even read the article? Eric talks about how American designed encryption paradigms will eventually introduce free speech that cannot be stopped or surveilled even in places like China. What Google's search market shares have to do with that concept is beyond me, though.

The article was not about the technology, but about the ability for Google to unilaterally affect the ability for the Chinese government to surveil their population.

The premise relies on Google being irreplaceable to the Chinese economy.

    We are gambling with Google’s stack that
    they are big enough and important enough
    that the Chinese authorities would not 
    dare block it in mainland China completely.

However, that isn't supported by the data - Google's market share. If Google did something which the government truly objected to, such as offering encrypted proxies (which encrypted search is), then they could block the entire domain and only affect the portion of their population that uses it.

Market share is a good proxy to measure that population, and it's 3%.

I'm not convinced that 3% is large enough to cause the government to give up.

Re: Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

#72

Post by est » Sun, Nov 24, 2013, 1:02 AM UTC

nisa wrote: post #61

est wrote: post #11

that seems to be a great idea, google could also do Germans a favor by hosting "this video is not available in your country" mirrors, right?

It's Google themselves that block the videos on YouTube for German visitors. Their rationale is that this frees them from paying the fantasy fees that GEMA wants from them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_YouTube_videos_in_...

guess what, China has laws that 'regulate' news and online videos, too

Re: Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

#73

Post by gcr » Sun, Nov 24, 2013, 6:13 AM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #70

gcr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GIMP no longer distributes binaries on sourceforge because sourceforge's installer "bundles third-party offers with Free Software packages. We do not want to support this kind of behavior, and have thus decided to abandon SourceForge." http://www.gimp.org/ http://www.gluster.org/2013/08/how-far-the-once-mighty-sourc...

After reading that it doesn't look to me like they're sneaking into otherwise pure installers or doing it without project's knowledge. "When SourceForge introduced this, it bribed encouraged the top projects to participate by giving them a cut of the take. So these co-operating projects are also knowingly selling their users down the river." For as long as I can remember Sourceforge's usability has sucked. That's rea…

Aha, thanks for the clarification. It's good to know SF is only doing this under the consent of project leaders; I was under the impression that they were sneaking it under the radar.

Re: Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

#74

Post by charliesmith » Sun, Nov 24, 2013, 4:50 PM UTC

yapcguy wrote: post #49

charliesmith wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not giving up anything of our own, but we really have nothing to give up. If Google ignores this and life goes on, life will go on for us, too. We will continue to do what we are doing. If I could do what we suggest Google does, then I would. But we are not Google. They have the power to do this, they can do it now - we should not have to wait for ten years. Eric Schmidt is saying today that Russia is taking cu…

Who is funding you? Why are you tackling censorship in China first and not any other country, like your own?

We are Chinese but we are now considering expanding.

Re: Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

#75

Post by charliesmith » Sun, Nov 24, 2013, 4:52 PM UTC

peeters wrote: post #62

> Critics of our approach will say that the "do it, they might not block you" argument is tenuous at best. But that is not what we are saying. What we are saying is: >>“Google! Do it! If they don't block you, freedom wins. If they do block you, there will be much more opposition to censorship inside China and the system will be forced to change, thus freedom wins too!” >Win-win. I don't think the author realizes what…

No - they are losing market share in search (3%) and if they keep their current course will continue to lose. The opportunity here is to gain one billion customers (well, 600 million now), by freeing the internet in China and hence at least making substantial money on ad sales.