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Sure, but what motivation would they have to open it in China instead of just blocking it and propping up a Facebook-style Chinese site that they can surveil for free?
Perhaps they could get access to information about people outside of China.
I haven't taken many active steps not to depend on them, but it's troubling whenever I think about what happens if a bad apple gets in the bunch. If I were to become a target of someone with access to Google or Facebook level data, there would be nowhere to run.
I don't foresee becoming a target in the near future, so I haven't done much to 'liberate' myself or switch to open solutions. For now the services provided give me many more benefits than worries. I just wanted to point out that this article is playing on xenophobic fears and we should be careful of doublespeak.
A lot of xenophobia in this article. The amount of data Facebook, Google and others are collecting on us is worrying when we think of what might happen if it gets into the "wrong" hands. Right now thoughts of China buying Facebook illicit this image easily in our western minds, but we should recognize this feeling as an admission that we don't really feel safe giving so much control to these companies. I haven't take…
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Google offered Groupon $6bn and they turned it down. Facebook is worth at least 10x as much as Groupon in my mind.
Considering that Groupon is basically burning cash and that (until further evidence) their business model is unsustainable, I don't think that's a good example. People should really compare Facebook to Google. Google post-IPO was valued at a "bubbly" 27 billion in 2004. And take note that at that time Google already proved it had a viable business model; but people were still freaking out because Google only had one…
The better comparison is to Google today, which is worth $171B. Is Facebook worth 2/3 as much as Google? It certainly could be, since if it assaults Google head-on in an ad network, given certain other assumptions it could capture a huge market position.
The article confusingly states first that China's stake would not be influential, and then states that the apparent reason for China's interest is to have "control in the long run". Even if China's stake was influential, why would they need it in order to censor Facebook? They censor plenty of sites in which they have no stake whatsoever.
Uh, to censor it in other countries?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google offered Groupon $6bn and they turned it down. Facebook is worth at least 10x as much as Groupon in my mind.
Considering that Groupon is basically burning cash and that (until further evidence) their business model is unsustainable, I don't think that's a good example. People should really compare Facebook to Google. Google post-IPO was valued at a "bubbly" 27 billion in 2004. And take note that at that time Google already proved it had a viable business model; but people were still freaking out because Google only had one…
The exact same line of thinking that you are using would allow you to say "Here's a source that puts Myspace above Facebook (Alexa rankings from 2008), and most likely had higher ad revenue at that time. MySpace just sold for $35m so how can you say Facebook is worth even $100m?"
Valuations of tech companies is largely based on future projections and the future projections of Groupon has shifted in the past 6 months just as significantly as MySpace did in the last 3 years.
