Google Opens Asian Data Centers But Shuns China and India 75
judgecorp writes "Google has opened data centers in Singapore and Taiwan to serve the boom in Asian Internet users. But it canceled a $300 million data center project in Hong Kong to focus on the Taiwan site and the smaller one in Singapore. Officially the problem was lack of space in Hong Kong, but China's repressive attitude to the Internet (and the history of the Chinese hack on Gmail in 2010) must have contributed to the move."
good for them (Score:4, Interesting)
LOL (Score:0, Interesting)
Does that come with or without the NSA tap?
Re:best to keep away from countries that spy and h (Score:4, Interesting)
This is probably going to sound really stupid, but imagine for a moment that you're a company called Loolge, and you've been court-ordered to allow your home government's security agency - let's call it the NAS - access to the vast archives of information you hold on your enormous international customer base. One day a large, rival nation - Nicha - hacks into your servers and gains access to some of that prized information.
Wouldn't the NAS mandate that you immediately and permanently stop doing business in Nicha, lest there be another breach?
I can think of a thousand holes in this but it kind of demonstrates how playing ball with someone like the NSA makes all Google's previous "do no evil" actions seem suspect.
Perhaps recent moves by the Indian Govt. made Goog (Score:5, Interesting)
http://m.slashdot.org/story/195431 [slashdot.org]
(If you didn't read the article, basically it's how the Indian Govt., seemingly in light of Nokia's purchase by deep pocketed Microsoft, has raised the amount of taxes due from $300M to $3B)
I have no problem with any country imposing whatever taxes they want on any foreign entity wanting to do business in their country. That's what comes with them being a "sovereign" state I guess. What's sure to drive businesses away (and will keep me from bringing my modest company there) is when they impose such taxes/restrictions RETROACTIVELY as was in this and other cases. That's not to mention the lack of infrastructure, corruption, nepotism, and poor education there. (I have just suffered personally from this, I was in Bangalore two days ago where I got serious food poisoning from a McDonalds, evidently some people are cutting corners or aren't properly trained/managed).
I'm sure Nokia is rueing the day they decided to build their manufacturing plant(s) there. While apologists for this may say it's probably just a negotiating tactic, there's another word for it: extortion.
Say what you will about the U.S. and other developed countries at least they pay lip service to the rule of (hopefully non-arbitrary) law for decades (or maybe centuries like in Switzerland). Seen in this light, perhaps Google's decision to likewise stay out of China is a bit less mysterious. A prominent Chinese professor was fired from a top ranked Chinese university for calling on the government to follow the Chinese Constitution and adhere to the rule of law. Evidently he didn't toe the government line (as announced by the newly installed, not elected premiere) that requiring the government to follow their own Constitution was a plot by the western powers to weaken China. (I believe the government didn't even pretend, as in other cases, that this professor was bad at his job; he received generally positive reviews from student evaluations. Of course even if he was terrible, tenure should allow him academic freedom to speak his mind but hey, this is China).
Instead the Chinese government reserves the right to arbitrary use of power. So if you were Google, would you put a substantial technological investment there?
Thank god that Google (Android), Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Intel, Cisco, AMD and I almost forgot Microsoft, are American companies. Can you imagine what the world would be like if China had the power the NSA has? (I guess ARM is not American but their British so that's close. And although I'm American, I'm not remotely white, can you tell by my username? :)
Re:good for them (Score:4, Interesting)