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A new approach to China

googleblog.blogspot.com

81–90 of 392 posts

Re: A new approach to China

#81

Wikileaks brings up a good point... "Should be noted that Google keeps secret how many user's records are disclosed to US intelligence, others." Nonetheless, good on Google for taking a stand.

Maybe because those requests are part of a lawful subpoena? I'm sure things would be different if they were busy getting hacked by the CIA and FBI.

Re: A new approach to China

#82
post #25

This is incredible. This is the first time, I have seen a LARGE company * Putting its users above profits * Stand up to Chinese Government. Since accounts of human rights activists were targeted, this operation was clearly done at the behest of Chinese Government. I'm disgusted by the levels to which the Chinese Government can stoop. It is time the world stands up to China. If a corporation, whose main aim is to gene…

I hope this increases the pressure on other search providers to do the right thing. It will be interesting to see how the Chinese govt responds

[deleted]

Re: A new approach to China

#83
post #21
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who else would want to garner information from emails of human rights activists in China?

that's incredibly naïve. Plenty of organizations would find that information useful.

That may be true, but the facts lend themselves to the implication that the Chinese government is involved. Though that might not be true, it likely is true that the Chinese government is the the single largest entity with the highest interest in these emails.

Re: A new approach to China

#84
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for all these years, Google China has done decent job by providing Google Pinyin, Goolge Music for China to the country. I really appreciate that. Hoping this decision was just a beginning of a bigger picture.

Which also makes their departure a bigger negotiating point with the Chinese government.

It is not a negotiating, it is a choice that Google already made by not censoring search result. Chinese gov is known for the attitude not negotiating with human right activists.

Re: A new approach to China

#85

I'm all for taking the high ground, but I highly doubt this will change the Chinese government's behavior. Google doesn't have such a huge market share in China and leaving will only help local competition (e.g. Baidu) that can be more easily controlled by the government. What leverage does Google have? This is really the classic engagement vs. isolation debate. The only thing that might have any leverage would be to…

It does send a pretty clear message though that Google (one of the best known companies in the world) doesn't think it's safe to do business in China.

Re: A new approach to China

#86
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"in order to say 'don't be evil' you must already dwell in that space of evil" -Slavoj Zizek at Google: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x0eyNkNpL0#t=1h13m55s

I can't really spend the time to watch that video right now, nor am I in the right context. Could someone summarize it for me? It can't be that what he's saying is that you have to be evil for "don't be evil" to have any meaning, because that would be moronic. But I can't parse any other meaning from this short little quote.

Edit: no, that's not what he's saying, but I think I might not have the intellectual capacity to paraphrase what he did say well without thinking about it some more.

Re: A new approach to China

#87
The Times' has a source with an interesting addition to the story: Google did not publicly link the Chinese government to the cyber attack, but people with knowledge of Google’s investigation said they had enough evidence to justify its actions.

A United States expert on cyber warfare said that 34 companies were targeted, most of them high-technology companies in Silicon Valley. The attacks came from Taiwanese Internet addresses, according to James Mulvenon, an expert on Chinese cyberwarfare capabilities.

Mr. Mulvenon said that the stolen documents were sent electronically to a server controlled by Rackspace, based in San Antonio.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/world/asia/13beijing.html

Re: A new approach to China

#88
post #38

nobody seems to be commenting on the attack part of that post. what was the "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google"? that doesn't sound like just a few end-user gmail accounts being compromised, but something that was much more serious that may have exposed more information than just what these ch…

For some background information:

GFW research team tried heavily to crack down the SSL certificate for gmail (thus, they can censor the gmail content through GFW).

Re: A new approach to China

#89
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.

On top of a profitable business in China, Google now has some ability to leverage some change in China. At the least, other corporations and governments will reconsider their relationships or expectations of China. Google had no influence before they opened google.cn, and as netcan pointed out, it wouldn't have been very useful to show sites not viewable through the Great Firewall anyway.

Business and an opportunity they didn't have before. Be charitable, this looks like a better outcome than had they stayed out of China altogether.

Re: A new approach to China

#90
Just awesome. I'm so glad google did this I can barely describe it.

I can't help but think of the old saw about "feeding the alligator hoping he will eat you last". It appears google has realized that the alligator sometimes comes after you anyway. This is a wakeup call to other companies that tolerate oppressive regimes all over the world.

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