China's 'First Fully Homegrown' Web Browser, Used By Key Government Bodies, Under Fire For 'Heavily' Copying Google Chrome Files (ft.com) 134
Redcore, a Chinese start-up that claims to have produced a homegrown browser used by key government bodies and state-run companies, has come under fire after users discovered its software was heavily based on Google's Chrome browser [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: The company, which says it has created "innovative and world-leading" browser technology, came under scrutiny on Thursday when users looked through the browser's installation directory and discovered an original "chrome.exe" file along with image files of the Chrome logo. "We have launched the world's only purely China-owned browser Redcore, to break the US monopoly," the company said in a statement on Wednesday. The Financial Times verified Chinese users' findings and found with its own examination that Redcore was using components from the v. 49 version of Google Chrome. "Redcore has Chrome [elements] in it," said company founder Gao Jing in response to fierce public criticism. "But this is not plagiarism; rather, we are standing on the shoulders of a giant for our own innovation," she added, according to local media reports. Ms Gao was also quoted as saying that the company had so far been doing very well in terms of customer satisfaction.
Hahaha (Score:4, Insightful)
they sure do copy a lot over there
do they ever really innovate? I mean in the last 800 years
Re:Hahaha (Score:4, Interesting)
do they ever really innovate?
They might argue that imitation is its own form of innovation. They may not have a cultural preponderance towards originality (understatement of the fucking century) but you can't say they're not efficient.
Yes China innovates (Score:3)
they sure do copy a lot over there
Yes they do and there is some good money in it too. But to be fair there is more than a little of it over here too.
do they ever really innovate? I mean in the last 800 years
Yes. Quite a lot actually. Sure there is a robust amounts of counterfeiting and knock off products but plenty of original work too. People used to think Japan produced nothing but crappy knockoffs too back in the 1950s and there were legitimate reasons to think that but over time it changes as the economy develops.
Need evidence of innovation? You're looking at it right now. The majority o
Not innovation, just improvement (Score:3)
True innovation is coming up with something that doesn't exist, isn't even an idea, and making it happen. Making a new browser, even if the Chinese didn't steal code from Chrome, is not innovation. It's attempted improvement.
Improvement looks at what everyone else is doing and tries something different, while "standing on the shoulders of the giant". No original thought.
The reasons any tech is in China is for cheap labor and loose environmental standards. I've worked in tech and with the Chinese. We ha
No True Scotsman (Score:5, Informative)
True innovation is coming up with something that doesn't exist, isn't even an idea, and making it happen.
Ahh the no true Scotsman [wikipedia.org] fallacy.
Improvement looks at what everyone else is doing and tries something different, while "standing on the shoulders of the giant". No original thought.
So you are saying Issac Newton [wikipedia.org] didn't have an original thought. Might want to go back and revisit that line of logic. NOBODY has ideas that don't build on the work of others. If you think you are the only person to have an idea then you are delusional. If your standard for "true innovation" is a thought or product nobody else had considered previously then there is no such thing as "true innovation". Your argument is complete nonsense.
The reasons any tech is in China is for cheap labor and loose environmental standards
There are a LOT of reasons why a lot of electronics and other tech are made in China. You mentioned two factors but they aren't the only ones nor the most important ones in a lot of cases.
I've worked in tech and with the Chinese. We had to QC all of their work.
I've been to China, worked in global sourcing, and source products from there daily in my day job most of which are just fine. China produces massive amounts of high quality good and services. Yes there is some junk too but your sweeping claims about the quality of work from China is demonstrably false. Sounds like your company hired the wrong people or didn't have the experience to manage them properly. Happens to a lot of companies. Doesn't mean that everything from China is shit.
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There are a LOT of reasons why a lot of electronics and other tech are made in China.
A big reason is the pre-existing supply chain. If you manufacture in Shenzhen, you can get almost any components you need, because they are also manufactured in Shenzhen. Need some 2mm #000-120 screws? You can send a guy on a bicycle to go get some and he will be back in 30 minutes.
China isn't so cheap anymore. In Shenzhen, even someone straight off the bus is going to cost you $3/hr. You may need to pay $5/hr to keep experienced workers. Vietnam is less than half that, and Bangladesh is a quarter. La
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I've worked in tech and with the Chinese. We had to QC all of their work.
Oh? We simply paid them for quality rather than chasing the lowest bidder, lo and behold we never had any failures for anything we procured from them. If you need to QC other's work, it says more about your procurement strategy than some generic 1/7th of the population of the world.
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I've heard of companies that operate like that, but was told they charge an arm and a leg. Do you recall the ballpark estimate of how much more you paid versus the factories that give low bids? I imagine it wasn't a mere 50% extra.
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No it's kind of the point. China will develop anything you want at the quality you request. The fact most people go there looking for something cheap just skews the impressions. China will provide you with everything from a cheap mobile phone charger that will burn down your house, to fantastically made components for medical instruments, or in my case industrial safety systems.
You get what you pay for, China is not an exception.
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Innovation by China? Not so much.
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Some of that technology you're giving Apple credit for was designed in the UK, like the CPU, and only customized by Apple. Apple in your example is China in this story! LMFAO!
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Yeah. Apple will specify the machinery the factory will use. But the machine tools are typically manufactured in Japan. Also it's a question of time until that changes. Much like what happened with Apple's desktop PC line.
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Post-war Japan was producing products based on western designs with expired copyright. I have one in the room, a clone of a Singer sewing machine that was designed ~1900 and manufactured in the late 1940s.
They didn't "copy" anything, those are the products that they were told to make. Factories that had been producing war-related materials were all switched over by the Americans who were running their economy in that era. Many of the sewing machine factories were formerly making aircraft. There isn't a sing
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You mean an expired PATENT.
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No sorry.
The advanced electronics were *designed* elsewhere even if the fab is in China. Ditto for advanced optics, etc.
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It's no different than when these countries claim they're making their own operating system, and then all they really produce is some variant of Linux or Android with a different skin.
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they sure do copy a lot over there
do they ever really innovate? I mean in the last 800 years
They dredged up brand new islands from the sea floor and claimed those have been their territory since antiquity. I can't think of a single other time that's been done before.
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chrome.exe? (Score:2)
It's Chromium, not Chrome. (Score:3, Informative)
Any danger of getting even the basic facts right?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Any danger of getting even the basic facts right?
No, you're safe here.
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Prove it. Quite a few other news sources are reporting it as Chromium not Chrome.
Re:It's Chromium, not Chrome. (Score:4, Informative)
There are screenshots of the installation directory showing trademarked chrome icons and a chrome.exe executable.
https://shanghai.ist/2018/08/1... [shanghai.ist]
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Should also expand that to mention that it appears to be based on a Chrome 49 build, which is 2 years out of date.
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Should also expand that to mention that it appears to be based on a Chrome 49 build, which is 2 years out of date.
The next time RIAA/MPAA issues a DMCA to me I'll let them know the song or video is more than 2 years old and its OK to copy.
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Way to miss the point. They're bad at stealing is the point. If you're going to rip off a browser, at least rip off the current version with all the security patches.
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So. . . the. . . point. . . is. . . that I should rip off the current version of the song or video that has been recently remastered?
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No, but if you're going to steal an album rip, maybe don't go for the 32Kbps version.
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Way to miss the point. They're bad at stealing is the point. If you're going to rip off a browser, at least rip off the current version with all the security patches.
But in that case it would take work for the Chinese government to build in vulnerabilities that they can exploit to spy on its users. Better to leverage an older browser that already has these vulnerabilities.
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It's probably that they have been in dev for that long, and haven't bothered to undo all of their work to try to keep up with a browser that releases every 2 weeks.
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The trademarks are the proof. Not the main or most relevant infringement
Re: It's Chromium, not Chrome. (Score:2)
It must be Chromium as there is no source code for Chrome. Chromium builds using chrome.exe is normal. The elephant in the room is the files containing Chrome branding, that shouldn't be there.
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Google search is not currently available in China, but other Google products are, including maps, translation, and Android. Google search may be returning soon.
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It could have been and would have been at least halfway legitimate. But it wasn't. Chromium has its own icons but their program has the Chrome icons buried within it that aren't for open use. Chromium's executable is chromium.exe, not chrome.exe - and they had no reason to rename that.
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According to screenshots in this thread it's executable is called redcore.exe
https://productforums.google.c... [google.com]
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*its
Re:It's Chromium, not Chrome. (Score:5, Informative)
For the shell. Looking deeper in the installation directory, you find Chrome icons and chrome executables:
https://shanghai.ist/2018/08/1... [shanghai.ist]
And if the directory names are anything to go by, it's a 2 years out of date version of Chrome at that.
Re: (Score:2)
Ahhh fair enough!
Maybe (Score:1)
Google copied them.
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Uh-oh, does this mean Google is in control of the planet's only Stargate?!?! z0mg!
Isnâ(TM)t a lot of Chrome open source? (Score:1)
I thought a lot of Chrome was open source so why is this a problem? If China used a lot of Chromium and Blink engine both of which are open sourced along with WebKit. Just not sure how this is a story?
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Because they didn't use Chromium. They actually bundled the commercial Chrome software inside.
If you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you (Score:3)
"But this is not plagiarism; rather, we are standing on the shoulders of a giant for our own innovation," she added, according to local media reports. Ms Gao was also quoted as saying that the company had so far been doing very well in terms of customer satisfaction.
Not plagiarism? Well, that's technically correct. This would be corporate espionage at worst and copyright/trademark infringement at best. But let's leave that aside and wonder why they weren't satisfied with grabbing and using Chromium, the open source project Chrome is largely based on. I'm certain they have the technical expertise to compile and create a distribution package. That shouldn't be a high hurdle to jump, so it come back to why?
Maybe it's a political statement to Google who is trying to get back into the mainland Chinese market? We can take your & call it our own, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Also, the last bit about customer satisfaction? Is the article just weird about what questions were asked because that really feels like it came out of no where.
Re: (Score:3)
"But this is not plagiarism; rather, we are standing on the shoulders of a giant for our own innovation," she added, according to local media reports. Ms Gao was also quoted as saying that the company had so far been doing very well in terms of customer satisfaction.
Not plagiarism? Well, that's technically correct.
Well, it technically is plagiarism, albeit not in the traditional domain of interpersonal communication. If code can be copyrighted, then it can be plagiarized.
This would be corporate espionage at worst and copyright/trademark infringement at best. But let's leave that aside and wonder why they weren't satisfied with grabbing and using Chromium, the open source project Chrome is largely based on. I'm certain they have the technical expertise to compile and create a distribution package. That shouldn't be a high hurdle to jump, so it come back to why?
This is a good point. I think the answer is obvious. There was never an intent to distribute this code outside of China. Hence, there were no worries about legal ramifications outside of China. The Chinese government views the use of "standing on the shoulders of a giant for our own innovation" via direct copying and appropriating of technology
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+1.
It would be stupid to write a browser without reusing some open-source code. Re-implementing the wheel is never a good idea and just asking for security issues.
However, it seems there is a disconnect between what they claim (fully homegrown) and what they do (start from chrome, at the point that they even forgot to remote some chrome licensed files).
Always funny to see the PR person respond to this by "but the users like it" which is the worst thing you can respond (because 1. it is not the question a
The web was made from copies (Score:2)
Chrome came from webkit which came from KDE's khtml
Firefox had to change its name twice from Firebird and Phoenix.
HTML came from SGML and hypertext was described in the 1940s.
All browsers claim to be Mozilla/5.0
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Internet Explorer licenced Mosaic from spyglass.
licensed
Chrome came from webkit which came from KDE's khtml
And Chrome is commercial software unlike Webkit and KHTML. The updated open source parts are available in Chromium, which this company could easily have used but didn't.
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Firefox had to change its name twice from Firebird and Phoenix.
How is this copying the product? They picked a name for it and needed to change it because they didn't know it was already taken. Has nothing to do with the product itself.
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Minor nit, but HTML is literally SGML, it didn't "come from" it any more than a square "came from" a rectangle.
So, the usual? (Score:2)
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I suppose ...
Meanwhile, it would have been nice to have another truly different browser added to the world, instead of another Chrome clone.
no surprise (Score:1)
"Redcore is founded by Chen Benfeng ... Chen previously worked at ... Microsoft"
If you're gonna steal something (Score:2)
Don't brag about it....
How is this an issue (Score:2)
Reality check (Score:2)
vs.
Since when taking people for idiots has become so egregious?
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Since China became a place where it is illegal to call them out on it too strongly.
redefining the meaning of the word "innovation" (Score:1)
Color me surprised! </sarcasm> (Score:3)
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If their innovation isn't American, why did they need to come here in order to do it? Why couldn't they innovate where they were before?
Maybe they weren't born American, and yet the work they do here in America is still American work. For an American university. And they were probably paid in American dollars.
Shame (Score:2)
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If you want to spy on users, that's a good way (Score:2)
Google does track everything you do, even after you "leave" the browser.
just theft (Score:2)
I see this as theft, not even clever theft.
But many innovators are, by necessity, standing on their predecessors shoulders.
To integrate you often need to know how other products work.
Ecclesiastes 1:9
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
China doin what they do best. (Score:1)
Why Not Firefox? (Score:2)
Odd ... wasn't all the source code available at one point for Firefox or its predecessor anyway?