Google Outage Shows Risk of Doing Business In China

Hugh Pickens writes "The WSJ reports that widespread disruptions to Google in China over the weekend, halting use of everything from Google's search engine to its Gmail email service to its Google Play mobile-applications store, underscore the uncertainty surrounding Beijing's effort to control the flow of information into the country, as well as the risks that effort poses to the government's efforts to draw global businesses. The source of the disruptions couldn't be determined, but Internet experts pointed to China's Internet censorship efforts, which have been ratcheted up ahead of the 18th Party Congress. 'There appears to be a throttling under way of Web access,' says David Wolf, citing recent articles in foreign media about corruption and wealth in China spurred by the party congress and the fall of former party star Bo Xilai, 'that's their primary concern, people getting news either through Google or through its services.' Beijing risks a backlash if it were to block Google outright on a long-term basis, says Wolf and such a move could put Beijing in violation of its free-trade commitment under the World Trade Organization and make China a less-attractive place to do business. 'If China insists in the medium and long term of creating another Great Firewall between the China cloud and the rest of the world, China will be an increasingly untenable place to do business.'"

Re:anyone else curious

[euyis]

It was a mass DNS poisoning for the outage in China, at least for me. All subdomains on google.com were deliberately resolved to some random IP allocated to South Korea, and a hosts file quickly fixed it.

Re:Laws of country

[euyis]

The fact is, Google is not struggling because the Great Firewall or because the government makes competition hard. Google is struggling on their own regards and only by themselves. They seem not to be able to justify their existence in China and doesn't seem to offer Chinese citizens what they want.

Hmm, it only takes one paragraph to tell that you're talking out of your ass. Have you ever tried to use any Google service from China? Do you have the faintest idea how long does it take to load one page of search results, or how often does the Wall reset all connections to Google from your IP for one full minute, for some censorship filter was triggered by the most ordinary and unoffensive search terms? And these things are not exactly good for business.

Re:Laws of country

[rtfa-troll]

You have to abide laws everywhere in the world. This includes abiding Chinese laws..

Right; so how about: The Chinese government starts following Chinese law, in particular article 35 or the Chinese constitution which says:

Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration

or this:

Article 41. Citizens of the People's Republic of China have the right to criticize and make suggestions to any state organ or functionary. Citizens have the right to make to relevant state organs complaints and charges against, or exposures of, violation of the law or dereliction of duty by any state organ or functionary; but fabrication or distortion of facts with the intention of libel or frame-up is prohibited. In case of complaints, charges or exposures made by citizens, the state organ concerned must deal with them in a responsible manner after ascertaining the facts. No one may suppress such complaints, charges and exposures, or retaliate against the citizens making them. Citizens who have suffered losses through infringement of their civil rights by any state organ or functionary have the right to compensation in accordance with the law.

And how about, companies like Microsoft, Cisco and so on, start obeying Chinese law by treating those that break that article of the constitution as criminals and stop doing business with them?

Re:I agree...

[egamma]

It's not "towed" the line. It's not a rope. The phrase is "toed" the line, as in, someone drew a line in the sand and you are sticking your toe across the line, challenging them.

Re:I agree...

[KeithJM]

The phrase is "toed" the line, as in, someone drew a line in the sand and you are sticking your toe across the line, challenging them.

Close. Toeing the line means you keep your ties right at the line without crossing it, thus you are specifically obeying all of the rules and not challenging authority.

Get real. This was already known, just ignored

[WindBourne]

Chinese gov. is counting on businesses being lead by short-thinking greedy fools. Look at Trans-Mag, Germany's cool and innovative mag-lev. China agreed to buy it and gave assurances that their tech would not be stolen. To assure that, Germany had posted guards at various locations to stop China from entering. Then China simply sent in the red army, forced the doors open and allowed a number of engineers/academia's to look over the tech. As such, China is now developing a number of new low-cost mag-levs based on Germany's approach.

Boeing and Airbus have been FOOLISH in allowing China to do various parts of planes. Sadly, Boeing gives one part of a plane to China and buys Boeing. But then China approached Airbus and says that if you will give us a different part from an airbus plane, then we will put that plane on the approved list. IOW, Chinese gov. is making sure that they get access to ALL of the tech because so many western companies think short-term.