Microsoft Retreats In China (reuters.com) 57
Microsoft has been steadily scaling back its China presence, closing at least 15 branch offices and joint ventures over the past five years as Beijing favors domestic software. U.S. export controls also make it harder to grow its cloud and AI businesses, leaving the market with relatively little economic upside. Reuters reports: Microsoft took a major hit from the erosion of trust between Washington and Beijing, the five people said. China has since 2017 pushed the use of domestic software, which Beijing sees as more secure and whose quality is increasingly competitive with Windows and Office. U.S. restrictions, including export controls on advanced technology, have meanwhile hindered efforts to scale Microsoft's lucrative AI and cloud businesses in China.
[...] Microsoft ultimately decided to remain because it had carved out a profitable business servicing Chinese companies like TikTok owner ByteDance, which need Western technology to manage overseas operations, according to three people familiar with the matter. The company also believed that it needed a presence to maintain access to China's world-class engineering talent, two of them said. Microsoft had also cultivated a relationship with the government that is among the deepest of any tech company, its former China head Alain Crozier told Reuters. "Because of the geopolitics ... some days it's a little bit harder, but we never had a crisis," he said.
A Microsoft spokesperson did not address questions about the firm's deliberations on its China business but said it operates in a regulatory "environment that applies to every international supplier" and that it remains committed to the Chinese market. The state of Microsoft's China business reflects market competition, regulatory demands and technological trends, the company said.
[...] Microsoft ultimately decided to remain because it had carved out a profitable business servicing Chinese companies like TikTok owner ByteDance, which need Western technology to manage overseas operations, according to three people familiar with the matter. The company also believed that it needed a presence to maintain access to China's world-class engineering talent, two of them said. Microsoft had also cultivated a relationship with the government that is among the deepest of any tech company, its former China head Alain Crozier told Reuters. "Because of the geopolitics ... some days it's a little bit harder, but we never had a crisis," he said.
A Microsoft spokesperson did not address questions about the firm's deliberations on its China business but said it operates in a regulatory "environment that applies to every international supplier" and that it remains committed to the Chinese market. The state of Microsoft's China business reflects market competition, regulatory demands and technological trends, the company said.
A different kind of security (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: A different kind of security (Score:1)
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for instance, deployment of image scanning as part of an automated "update" to scan and catalog end users images for reasons... o wait that was winders
Re: A different kind of security (Score:2, Interesting)
See that's the narrative that Americans love to tell themselves. But in reality the Chinese know that hidden backdoors don't stay hidden, and their national interest is best served by making software and devices secure for everyone. They don't need to spy on their citizens with secret software backdoors when cameras are on every corner and social credit records are openly implemented.
They saw the idiotic attempts the Americans made with stuff like the clipper chip. They won't make that same mistake.
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Indeed. The Chinese also know that publishing a story about a found backdoor in their software would be a great exploit for the US and hence they know that the US is looking. Strangely, nothing has been found so far. Or rather very obviously, nothing has been found and the whole thing is nothing but lies.
And no, that is not "socialist" or "China loving". This is what is called a "fact". Obviously the MAGA cretins do not know what that is.
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on the other hand it could be useful to keep that knowledge out of public sphere for exploitation. but that maybe giving to much credit
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> Indeed. The Chinese also know that publishing a story about a found backdoor in their software would be a great exploit for the US and hence they know that the US is looking. Strangely, nothing has been found so far. Or rather very obviously, nothing has been found and the whole thing is nothing but lies.
Or maybe, just maybe, when the Chinese AND the Americans IC agencies find exploits and backdoors in the other's countries, they keep them quiet and monitor, save for later, watch other people exploit,
Re: A different kind of security (Score:2, Interesting)
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Why bother compromising the software when you've already compromised the hardware? Why bother compromising the application when you've already compromised the operating system? Is hardware or software made by USA companies really any different?
Some people think that companies doing all that for profit are fine and dandy, but it's evil and horrible when the government does it. Most of them are too stupid to put together that if companies here (USA) are doing it for profit, the government can pretty much have access to all of it anyway.
Re:A different kind of security (Score:4)
I expect it to be secure in other ways too, like containing no backdoor for US agencies, no chat control for EU and such.
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Microsoft software is the same. Their services in China comply with local laws re security services having access to them, as do Apple's.
Of course in the US the same is true, they comply with US laws regarding access to customer data.
If this concerns you then look at companies which don't operate in China due to those rules, such as Google.
introduction of new economic model? (Score:1)
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I stll occasionally run QuickBASIC 3.00 in DOSBox, mostly to look back at the programs I wrote in school.
It was so much faster than any other BASIC at the time; it's still pretty impressive.
Decline. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've noticed huge american companies are scaling back, leaving the world to China and India and others. Temu and similar companies are eating Amazon's lunch out there. Our car companies are producing far more expensive and inferior cars and wouldn't be able to compete internationally, but are protected by the goverment here. Airbus seems to be taking lots of marketshare from Boing. A lot of this is the result of tarriffs and the pointlessly setting fire to our international relationships we've built up for decades at considerable expense but I think there's also just a sense of laziness and complacency. Stocks are going up, the american market is the biggest more lucrative one, so why bother compete internationally? Microsoft could keep going in China, but nah, there's not a lot of profit there currently, so why bother? That's obviously shortsited and short-term thinking, but whose incentivizing anyone to do any other kind of thinking?
Re:Decline. (Score:4, Insightful)
Every empire rises, declines, and eventually falls into ignominy.
The USA has been in ascendance for the past century. We are now early in the period of decline. Likely still the most powerful nation in many ways, but clearly losing ground in many more.
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No need for military expansionism to end declining, what you need is expense, lack of innovation and competition... yes, war can help too, but that is usually in the expense issue
Too much wasted money in luxury or war, while give healthy short term, don't scale and in a long term bleed the country fortune to others
Innovation, if other countries have newer ideas, your core business can be replaced and that make a long chain reaction in the economy, it may take many years, but it will corrode your power
Compet
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America can easily take all of Canada and Mexico...
All that tequila and maple syrup sounds like a fun weekend but I'm not sure it would be worth the hangover.
Re:You're skipping a step (Score:5, Insightful)
> You're skipping the step where the failing empire undergoes a period of rapid military expansionism in order to fill its coffers by looting other countries.
Did you miss the last fifty years?
We're past the military building phase of collapse and well into the loot-the-treasury phase. There's no way to unite America into a massive military buildup because half the population are immigrants who would leave and the other half have no desire to fight for the Epstein Regime.
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Did you miss the last fifty years?
Did you miss [reading about] the 1940s?
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the other half have no desire to fight for the Epstein Regime.
I'm sure the estimated half million Russians who have died fighting in Ukraine have no great love for their kleptocratic regime either, still, technically it's also an all volunteer army. Offering 5 years wages for signing, and half that again as a death benefit to your family has kept the ranks filled to the point that commanders squander them on a regular basis. Not so long ago Musk was paying a million for a single vote, I think we can manage it.
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Re: You're skipping a step (Score:2)
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Intelligent people have warned for decades about the perils of exporting industry to hostile countries. It's the midwits who thought it was great to ship everything to China because Muh Efficiency.
Trump is trying to bring that manufacturing back, but it's far too late. The 'elite' are far too corrupt and far too incompetent to actually rebuild a working society.
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to be blunt they're kind of insufferable" that's not it. The Bubba Class decided they didn't need no stinkin' experts in anything, e.g., science, health, diplomats (not campaign crazies), etc. The intertubes gave them the feeling they were somehow just as expert as anyone else. So they elected la Presidenta. And now what we have is an America that is in their image: corruptible, stupid, vapid.
It won't get better until the Bubba Class decides education is important and the Christian Right is booted to the cu
Re: Decline. (Score:2)
lol no (Score:2)
Foreign companies are leaving China in droves. The domestic market is collapsing there.
Re:Decline. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft operating systems are constantly sending telemetry - even screenshots - back to HQ. Why would you want to use an OS that spies on you?
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ahem
because i am a law abiding citizen doing nothing wrong, so, nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen
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Amazon is mostly just a marketplace for middle men who resell stuff from Alibaba with a 1000%+ mark-up. There is no point buying that stuff from Amazon because you can get it for less than 1/10th the price direct from AliExpress.
Okay, Ali's return policy isn't as good, but when you save over 90% you can afford to take the odd hit. After a while you might get VIP status too, which lets you return items without having to send them back, at which point Amazon is pretty much dead for anything except Western bra
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Groundhog day... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is at least the 2nd time they've done a retreat in China.
There has never been a level playing field there for foreign companies.
Re:Groundhog day... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just enough profit so companies will come there and China can steal everything.
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Re:Groundhog day... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft would simultaneously have you believe that their products are so good people can't help but want to use them, and that China is a hard place to sell a product in successfully so of course it only makes sense for them to withdraw.
Fact is, all of Microsoft's products are outshone by someone else's now, and many of them are free, and most of them are even Free!
Microsoft has already been transitioning towards being a service company more than a product company with Azure and 365. They are an IBM or Oracle now. Nobody wants most of their products, but they have legacy products that it makes sense to put them next to. If you were starting from scratch today, you'd start with something else.
Re: Groundhog day... (Score:1)
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Alternatively, we could nuke Redmond.
Microsoft, LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, letting China perform tech support for the DoD was probably the most boneheaded move ever. Bravo Microsoft ... Bravo.
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Yeah, letting China perform tech support for the DoD was probably the most boneheaded move ever. Bravo Microsoft ... Bravo.
boneheaded and greedy
Money Well Spent (Score:2)
Well all that bribe money shoveled in Trump's direction sure look like it's paying off now, doesn't it?
Could MS please retreat from EU? (Score:2)
That wouldveventually turn out to massively improve everyone's safety and quality of life so much.
Government relationship (Score:2)
"Microsoft had also cultivated a relationship with the government that is among the deepest of any tech company"
That is like bragging that you are really good at disposing of bodies, but not really wanting to talk about how you got so good.
birds of a feather (Score:2)
Probably best to get out early (Score:2)
So when China goes to war next year you are already out.
How about rest of the world? (Score:2)
Would be a great moment to do the same in the rest of world! After all these decades of being a continuous force for evil, FUD and other locust-like behavior..
Darn (Score:2)
I'd successfully de-Googled myself some time ago, but have grown to rely on Microsoft Copilot for helping me with life issues. That still requires a VPN, and Copilot uses the evil Cloudflare to check I'm human which is exceedingly over-zealous for VPN users. So, I need to move off yet another US company's service because I want (geographic) freedom. I've attempted to switch to Kimi, but it's slower and the paid service is wait listed. It's also a real pita to move existing chats/issues from one AI to anothe
Government Relations (Score:2)
Typically Microsoft opens offices in order to foster "Government Relations". For example when Munich worked on ditching Windows in favor of their "Limux" project, Microsoft opened an office in Munich... and quickly there was political pressure to close down that project, moving to Windows again.... ... maybe that strategy didn't work in China. Maybe government officials are less corrupt than they are here.