Google Steps Up Fight for the China Market 182
gaanagaa writes "News Sources are reporting that web services leader Google Inc. has won a license to operate in China and has bought a Web address as it battles Yahoo Inc. in the world's second-largest Internet market.
The U.S. Web services giant, which makes its money from searches, advertising and other services, is hiring staff with the aim of opening an office in the country this year, according to several sources within or close to the company.
A person familiar with the matter told Reuters the company was planning to open an office by the end of this year, most likely in Shanghai, and was building up a country team to target corporate customers for advertising sales."
How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Will Google's presence in China hasten the free flow of information, or end up encouraging the Chinese government to reactively restrict even more?
There's no question it's a lucrative market financially. The question is how much companies - even the "Don't be evil"-Google - will capitulate to the government's demands for censorship to guarantee a share of the spoils.
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's one example http://www.pandia.com/sw-2004/48-google.html [pandia.com]
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:1)
Anyway there's tons of ways to bypass that. The
What can they do? (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, China's government is a problem of chinese people. Google is a company fro USA. I can't find any reason why google should try to "free" chinese people, it's not their problem.
Re:What can they do? (Score:2)
I think that's part of the "don't be evil" mantra. Censorship in support of a dictatorship is generally considered to be a bad thing, at least among those who value freedom.
Max
Re:What can they do? (Score:2)
The chinese has tried to revolt against the government, only to be squashed by the government forces -- remember the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. Do you accept this as simply a problem for chinese citizens? The chinese government will demand that Google censor this event, along with a vast number of other "embarrassing" historical facts in the hope that the chinese will forget it ever
Re:What can they do? (Score:2)
So, what should google do, lobby bush to invade China?
Re:What can they do? (Score:2)
No, I don't see what they can do about it, but they should cross out the "do no evil" line in their charter, or perhaps amend it to "do no evil, except when in Rome...".
Re:What can they do? (Score:2)
Re:What can they do? (Score:2)
Re:Exactly. Brown people can't handle freedom. (Score:2)
OJ. Janet Jackson. Michael Jackson. Star Wars. Monica Lewinsky. Hugh fucking Grant. Thousands of people screaming, pushing and stepping all over each other so that they can touch the president. Fox fucking News.
Idiot bastards. Strange their country was set up by such bloody brilliant people.
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:2)
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Something tells me it won't be a simple matter of either/or. There will probably be ways for resourceful Chinese citizens to use Google in a manner the authorities don't want, and there will be some areas where Google will have to go along with the government.
A larger question might be this: Is the Chinese public better off with, or without Google?
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:1)
i know i'll be losing sleep over this.
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong question.
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:2)
Wrong question.
Maybe TV is the wrong analogy. What about the radios that brought in information from the outside world, despite the best efforts of governments to prevent it from happening? It seems to me that even comparing Google to radio transmissions is a limited analogy at best, given that the Web is by its nature more interactive and fungible by the average user.
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:3, Interesting)
And I don't see how this is a sign of google being evil. They simply want to enter a large market but must play by China's rules. At most, the rules are just going to restrict what web pages the Chinese can access, not modify the pages themselves in that form of censorship.
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:3, Interesting)
Further, as we know, Google is a massive gateway to learning (yes, yes.. among other things). I expect the more educated a population gets, the less like they are to tolerate a country that would censor information.
So if you're a die-hard google lover, at least you have that.
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:2)
And I don't see how this is a sign of google being evil. They simply want to enter a large market but must play by China's rules.
When it comes to censorship, "playing along" with it for the purpose of profit *is* evil.
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:1)
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:2)
Re:So Itunes is evil (Score:2)
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:2)
They can also choose not to tner the market. If they do, then they accept whatever Chinese government demands. By this time it's no longer purely a business action - it is now also a moral action, and it can be judged in terms of a/im/morality.
The idea what whatever a business does isnever has a moral angle to it is bogus.
"At most, the rules are just going to restrict what we
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:2)
The cats been out of the bag for a while (Score:1, Insightful)
From the day China allowed foreigners to work, information has become more acessible to it's citizens. Hell, I smuggled in a load of penthouse magazines back in 1979.
Google will only add to the flow of information. You've got a culture in which allegory and veiled implication, communication through code if you will, is already deeply rooted. In this context, any technology that enhances the ability of people
Re:How will Google's indexing be restricted? (Score:1)
Danger (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Danger (Score:1, Interesting)
Oh my! (Score:4, Funny)
Shareholder value (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully, now you see how aggressive a company must become once it goes public.
By the way, did you know that Sergey Brin no longer owns [yahoo.com] any shares in Google?
Re:Shareholder value (Score:3, Informative)
He could conceivably have unexercised options, though, right?
Re:Shareholder value (Score:1)
Often, the vesting plan of options will be such that you will exercise your options and cash the proceeds on the market. Not knowing what Brin's case is, I would tend to guess (based on the history of option exercisings and subsequent immediate sales of those shares) that he does not necessarily intend on keeping any shares.
All this is however purse speculation of course.
Re:Shareholder value (Score:2)
Re:Shareholder value (Score:1)
Re:Shareholder value (Score:1)
Eep, what would his taxes be like? (Score:2)
Re:Eep, what would his taxes be like? (Score:1, Informative)
You left off a zero. Sergey controls around 38 million shares of GOOG; at today's closing price of 231 that's about 8.7 billion dollars. He's sold a few hundred million worth, though.
long term capital gains, but that's still 15%.
15% Federal cap gains, plus the California 9.3% rate. Roughly 1/4 goes to taxes, as a minimum.
Huh, you'd think the street would be concerned when a cofounder and head honcho still running the company has s
Re:Shareholder value (Score:2)
And is there any other evidence he is completely sold off remeber he has $5billion is stocks or so? and the total amounts here amounted to less then a billion...
Re:Shareholder value (Score:2)
Re:Shareholder value (Score:2)
China (Score:5, Funny)
I guess it's true -- using Linux does lead to communism.
Censoring isn't the only problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
With Google moving quite rapidly into a "personalized" model, where your searches, email, search history, etc is all tied to a single account, tracking down people based on their Google activity shouldn't be too difficult.
As a side note, this is what happens [google.com] (delete is quite a misnomer IMHO) when you choose to "delete" your search information:
4. What happens when I pause the service, remove items, or delete the My Search History service?
You can choose to stop storing your searches in My Search History either temporarily or permanently, or remove items, as described in My Search History Help. However, as is common practice in the industry, Google maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users. For example, we use this information to audit our ads systems, understand which features are most popular to users, improve the quality of our search results, and help us combat vulnerabilities such as denial of service attacks.
Re:Censoring isn't the only problem... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Censoring isn't the only problem... (Score:2)
Well, the Chinese don't really need Google's information to find out who's searching for what since they control, oh, roughly 100% of the internet traffic. I say roughly, because this figure doesn't include the Transmission of IP Data [ietf.org]
What's evil? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's evil? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What's evil? (Score:1)
Re:What's evil? (Score:1, Insightful)
Would it be less evil to stay out of the chinese market and not give the chinese people any search services? My belief is that Google is doing the right thing here (so far, at least) because they cannot influence what is happening unless they are involved. Now that they are getting more involved they will be given opportunities to make ethically challenging decisions and we will just have to wait and see what choices are made.
benajamin
Re:What's evil? (Score:2)
Re:What's evil? (Score:2)
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/resc/html_bkup/may2200
That okay too?
New Market (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:New Market (Score:2)
Google should just delete China from their index! That'll show em!
Re:New Market (Score:2, Insightful)
Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hiding (Score:5, Insightful)
Freedom starts with you.
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:1, Insightful)
You may have just killed someone for all you know. I suggest before you start "leading the blind" you start thinking.
Freedom in China may or may not lead to you dying. Some ignorant bastard on slashdot giving links doesn't change the othjer 99.9% of China which won't rebel so you just get a guy taken
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess you better set off on your magic sled around the planet making sure that no-one ever puts anything offensive to anyone up on the Internet, since by your reasoning that mak
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:2)
People seem to be ignorant to the fact that Chinese people WANT/ACCEPT this as normal. As long as they are fine they don't care for the rest. Maybe before we start going "LEARN ZEE TRUTH!" we should address things like schools teaching racism against the Japanese no?
After all being ignorant of the pass doesn't hurt anyone else, where as hating a whole nation right next door does.
So maybe before
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:2, Interesting)
There are 1.5 BILLION people in China (Score:2)
That's the thing (Score:2)
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:3, Insightful)
How can you send your black children to a white school? You know the white kids are just going to pick on them, call them names, beat them up after class, possibly lynch one of the boys, and generally make their existences a living hell. How could you do that to a child when you know it won't make any difference because the white people will always find a way to keep the negroes down regardless of whether schools are integrated?
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:1)
is it a political propaganda like chinese goverment and organization sponsored by some nations does?
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:2)
Years later, with proper info, they found out he was like a Hitler without guns. No western schools would ever waste time teaching this stuff at the highschool level.
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:1)
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:4, Insightful)
I have traveled to China many times and work with many H1-B's from all parts of China. All of them are already quite knowledgeable about all the information provided in the links above, and most do not hesitate to engage in discussions about such topics over lunch. The fact that you feel all 1.6 billion Chinese are most certainly blind to these pieces of information is a direct result of years of indoctrination of Western (I'm assuming American) propaganda. If it appears that the Chinese people are not doing anything or caring about these things, it's because they're too busy making money and not wanting to be political martyrs. Who can blame them? When was the last time you personally put your own life (or probably in you or my case, your personal career/reputation/credit/criminal record) on the line for a cause against the government?
But really - what do you expect them to do? Start a bloody revolution because you can't do a few things? Because they execute a lot of citizens? (The state of Texas alone executes more people per capita than Communist China, by the way, according to Amnesty Intl) Just like the U.S., as long as the government can keep the middle class relatively comfortable, people will happily accept the status quo if it doesn't bother them too much. The more technology is integrated into Chinese society, the faster democracy will integrate into China. However, it seems that you're more a subscriber to the theory of instant gratification. But one doesn't have to look too much further than Russia to see how much harm sudden and unplanned transitions of complex political and economic systems can do. I'm sure you have good intentions, but the implementation of sudden riotious overthrowing never did anybody any good.
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:2)
Tell that to the founding fathers of the United States of America.
Max
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:3, Informative)
Incidentally, Falun Gong is a weirdo cult like Scientology. It's funny how everyone in the West thinks they're some kind of counterculture heroes. Guess what, you've only h
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:2)
Guess what, China's still a fucked up fascist dictatorship feebly trying to pass itself off as a working communist state. No amount of internet blocking will ever change that fact.
Thanks, Jack, but dictatorships don't deserve respect. And neither do the people who support them.
Max
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:2)
Neither is it fascist, it's the polar opposite, communist.
Even from the biased Western press you can get these facts, Jack.
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:2)
Calling yourself communist doesn't make you communist. You actually have to *practice* communism, a feat which no government has ever come close to at any time in human history.
China is a fascism, an autocratic authority ruling over an economic mix of capitalism and state-owned industry. It's the very definition of fascism.
Max
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:2)
Funny, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong [wikipedia.org] says otherwise.
BTW, would you support the US Government if it started persecuting Scientologists like the chinese went after people who followed Falun Gong?
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:2)
In addition, I can't load the site, as it's blocked. Wikipedia itself isn't blocked, but the F-G term is.
If the Scientologists tried to overthrow the government, they would have nobody but themselves to blame if the government moved to protect its own existence. F-G is rathe
American Citizen: What Your Ignorance Is Denying U (Score:2, Insightful)
American, the question is, how much is your arrogance and ignorance denying you?
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:5, Insightful)
On one hand, I can't help but admire the constant moralizing and ideological rigidity that Americans are so fond of. On the other hand, it shocks me that a people who consider themselves so enlightened can still be so... ignorant. Slashdot especially is pretty solid breeding ground for the militantly libertarian sort. I usually like reading
Let me dissect your self-righteous ramble line by line.
"...Great Leap Forward resulted in the deaths of some 30-60 million of your countrymen..."
Please, I find it insulting that you speak to the Chinese people as if we're all blind children. If you were even REMOTELY aware of Chinese history, you'll know that from 1976-1978 the CCP openly criticized Mao as part of the reform process. My family was part of the pre-1949 landowning class, and they suffered a GREAT deal from Mao's policies. The abuses of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are open grounds for public discussion. Chinese people are QUITE aware of their own history, thank you very much.
"...China's invasion of Tibet..."
Yes we are quite aware of that history as well. We are also quite aware of the fact that from 1950 through the late 1960's, the CIA trained several thousand guerrilla operatives in Tibet to combat the PLA. What perplexes me is how exactly is it that you feel you are reaching out to COMMON CHINESE PEOPLE by bringing up Tibet? I fully acknowledge that the 1950 invasion was probably morally indefensible. But if you seem to tie everything evil about China to 'them damn commies,' you are dead fucking wrong. Chinese nationalism is alive and well, with or without the CCP. If anything, the CCP is REIGNING IN grassroots nationalism. If the Chinese were to decide by popular concensus their policy towards say, Taiwan or Tibet, believe me, the attitude would be considerably more hostile than the current CCP policy.
"...Falun Gong..."
Yeah yeah I get it. Freedom of religion blah blah blah. Let's put it this way: Chinese people don't give a fuck. Now that would of course be a gross over-simplification, and I will elaborate on that statement even though simpletons like you are unable to achieve any level of nuance in your soapboxing. Religion and spirituality in China has been in flux for most of the 20th century. For those acquainted in Chinese history, China has never had a 'religion' per se. Confucianism and ancestor worship was a sort of philosophical/spiritual hybrid belief system, alien to the West, that China lived with until the 20th century. Since the old belief system was discredited by imperialism and the collapse of the Qing dynasty, Communism essentially took its place as a pseudo-religion of sorts. After communism was discredited in the post-Mao reforms, China was essentially at a loss to find a satisfying belief system. All sorts of cults, Falun Gong being the biggest, grew out of a vacuum. The VAST majority of Chinese however, are rather more devoted to making a living, and secular nationalism is a FAR bigger phenomenon than Falun Gong. The bottom line is that this is a marginal issue to most Chinese.
"...rather execute people rather than let them practice it..."
I have no idea where you've been getting your information buddy. There hasn't been large scale political executions in China since Tiananmen. Executions are for economic and violent crimes (corruption, smuggling, drugs, and homicide - several high-level provincial officials have been sent to the gallows). With crime rising along with increasing openness and economic instability, the death penalty is becoming MORE popular in China,
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:3, Insightful)
on one hand, I can't help but admire the constant moralizing and ideological rigidity that Americans are so fond of.
Unfortunately, this is a habit you seem to have taken to quite readily...
The abuses of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are open grounds for public discussion. Chinese people are QUITE aware of their own history, thank you very much.
Great! But then why did China ban the book? Or is that just marketing hype?
Falun Gong...is a marginal issue to most Chinese.
Agreed. Bu
Re:Chinese Citizens: What Your Government Is Hidin (Score:4, Insightful)
Not flamebait at all -- but I think you're missing out by casting the debate as legitimate Chinese fear of chaos vs. American ignorance, rather than simply distinguishing between two arguments.
What you're overlooking is the cost of the status quo -- the fact that the progressive misalignment of economic and political power can also cause instability. The value of free expression in China is not that they will suddenly decide to pull out of Tibet, but that they will develop the kind of political discourse needed to sustain progress. I think if you reread your own posts, you will see that the kind of social pressures needed to maintain a social consensus in the face of free content flows are already there -- "from my Chinese perspective...our Chinese concern for stability...[Chinese care about economic development, not Falun Gong]", etc. So in pointing out the concerns driving the need for censorship, you unwittingly point out why censorship is unnecessary.
Beyond that, you say, "wait until we're middle class and urbanized," but argue earlier that CCP abuses in the countryside are preventing this sort of thing from happening. This is precisely the kind of skew that poor information flows enable. And for as long as they're enabling it, you're going to be saying, "wait until we're all middle class and urbanized...".
So again, from my perspective, so have provided an illustration of a problem deepened and worsened by lack of open political discourse -- censorship may buy you time, but it won't make anybody *use* that time to solve the problems.
In sum, I think your attitudes towards fear of social chaos are reflected widely enough in Chinese society that while open content may shift the terms of the debate, nobody wants to ruin a good thing, economically. Further, I think the short-term expediency of censorship, by stunting political consensus-building on a broader array of issues, fuels precisely the kind of tensions you seem to fear most.
How do you type "Google"? (Score:1)
They still have money (Score:2)
The people of China deserve this and for that matter they deser
Re:They still have money (Score:1)
[read slashdot enough and you forget how to spell i gues]
Re:They still have money (Score:1, Insightful)
While
Re:They still have money (Score:1)
Then Google should not make their shares "public". Investors become owners to an extent and since they are public now, people interested in making money through investments will buy in to this company and expect profits. Google would have to make their stock a private investment to maintain the goals they have unilaterally.
Yahoo and 3721 (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe Google can buy baidu.
Slashdot finally gets its wish! Irony follows... (Score:4, Interesting)
It can even tell Big Corporations to censor American content or to lobby and donate to American politicians who are pro-China. If the Big Corporations fail to do so, China can easily place roadblocks in their way to help their more co-operative competitors.
Re:Slashdot finally gets its wish! Irony follows.. (Score:1)
It seems the Slashdot crowd has been wailing forever about how big corporations control our government. Now finally China has come along and can use its economic muscle to tell big corporations what to do.
It's only a contradiction if you (deliberately?) plot it on the wrong axis.
The "Slashdot crowd" wails mainly about big corporations exercising their control over government to restrict individual freedoms -- it's hard to see how the wailing about a government's dirct restriction of individual freedoms
Reality Check (Score:4, Insightful)
There are about 2.4 billion people in China and India compared to 0.3 Billion in America. In a few short years that brainpower is going to contribute to our standard of living. These people worried about forign competition are probably not going to complain when a freakishly brillian scientist in India or China cures cancer and saves their mom. In the grand scheme of things it's better for everybody that some of our wealth goes to nourish the brains of impoverished kids, they'll be saving our lives when we're old and gray. I have a feeling that we'll look back on the jobs most of us currently have as shackles that prevented us from pursuing our true interests.
Re:Reality Check (Score:2)
But then again, we are seeing China move towards a more capitalistic model and the United States moving towards a more socialist model, it will be interesting.
Your "facts" aren't fact (Score:1)
Your sentiments might have been good but your facts aren't, sort of like what Dan Rather claimed. Does this mean you have to resign?
Re:Your "facts" aren't fact (Score:2)
Re:Reality Check (Score:2)
During the same time, nearly 100 million people have been brought out of desperate poverty (under $1 per day income) in China.
Meanwhile, the US has one of the lowest unemployment rates of a developed country and one of the highest GDP growth rates for a developed country.
Capitalism is a moving force of power (Score:1, Troll)
Capitalism is a democratizing force. Whether or not Google complies with local laws and regulations matters far less than the increasing degree of involvement in modern capitalism -- which promotes the individual above the community (a lit
i can't see yahoo news, can you? (Score:2, Interesting)
Obj (Score:1)
Market China... (Score:2)
Ask Jeeves (Score:2)
Re:Ask Jeeves (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Goodbye ethics and morals ... (Score:3, Funny)
That insult would have been more effective if you had spelled it properly.
Re:Goodbye ethics and morals ... (Score:2)
Re:Censorship (Score:2)