In an interesting bit of international politics, Google is now going to bat against the Chinese government after they discovered a long running covert intelligence operation attacking numerous internet services in the interest of spying on human rights advocates. It has removed the majority of its state-request censorship blocks and declared that it's willing to give up business in China.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html


Meaning people in China can do this:

http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen+massacre

http://google.cn/search?q=great+firewall+of+china


http://google.cn/search?q=falon+gong


etc.

Yeah this is an interesting turn of events. Go Google!

Doesn't the Great Firewall still disconnect people when certain keywords are detected, regardless of what the site tries to serve?

There are things like that through the ISPs, and unlike here Google has a surprisingly small market share there. This is more for the consciences of Google's employees than to truly try and change anything in China.

30% isn't a small market share, although Baidu does have the majority. However, Baidu is state owned and operated, so no big shock.

On Google in China you can search anything you want all day long and it will come up. You just won't be able to connect to it as the actual ISP in China you are using blocks the IP etc. That is not really the core issue, though. Google is pulling out more or less due to the hostile business environment of having a percieved government invasion/hacker squad ransacking their business for political reasons.

The Chinese are very good at making life miserable for any foriegner doing business in China. You live under a microscope and they put up countless barriers at a whim because there is no advocate or authority to counter it. Ultimately you hope the sacrifice pays off because if you win the game against the Chinese...who prefer to have only Chinese businesses prospering in China (yes the same bunch of twits that bitch about protectionism) ...the pay off is access to 1.4 billion Chinese consumers and all the trappings going along with the ASEAN block. To play the game, you end up with 2 options:

Say fuck it and deal with the Chinese on their terms and hope for something workable or pull out and cut your losses. So it really is winner takes all this match but Google is deciding to fold.

Hop on Baidu and search for google.blogspot.com (where Google made that announcement). Cute.

What was it? I couldn't get any searches to work.

From where I'm sitting - regardless of the actual motive, good for Google. They are big enough for that public statement to hopefully carry weight with the business community.

That's what it was. You get a ~10m IP ban for searching for the Google announcement on Baidu (but you can search for Google or blogspot independent of each other and it's okay).

I wanna say good for Google, but it probably springs about 0.5% from morality, and about 95.5% from god business. As for carrying weight with other businesses, there's too much money to be made to make people follow Google's lead.

Google is supposedly losing it's shirt here in China though. Most of their big revenue generators, such as YouTube, are blocked.

30% isn't a small market share, although Baidu does have the majority. However, Baidu is state owned and operated, so no big shock.

30% isn't surprisingly small to you, given they dominate almost everywhere else in the world? Also, they actually don't get paid per search, their revenue comes from other tools (sponsored links, which are fewer in China, etc.)

Popular sites are often more regional than you'd intuit. IIRC, Yandex is beating Google in Russia too.

30% isn't surprisingly small to you, given they dominate almost everywhere else in the world? Also, they actually don't get paid per search, their revenue comes from other tools (sponsored links, which are fewer in China, etc.)

Microsoft is willing to fight tooth and nail for 30% here, you tell me. Their revenue is still primarily advertising based, which is primarily fueled by search. Baidu has every advantage in that marketplace, and it's to be expected. You name me one other market, for anything, in which 30% is not good. Cars. Phones. Airline tickets. Perfume. Computer sales (hello Apple making bank on 12% ..)

What surprised me is how much of a Google knockoff Baidu appeared to be, at least on the surface. The page layout, color scheme, etc. look awfully familiar. (And some of the URLs are in English too. http://news.baidu.cn, http://image.baidu.cn ?!)

A Chinese knockoff? What next?!

Heh. China even found a way to counterfeit water. The local water bottling plant, "Watson's Water" had a large amount of their empty 5 gallon carboys stolen and someone was refilling them with non-potable tap water, putting a bogus seal on them and peddling them as legit.

As for the topic, I wish Google the best of luck. As said before, living and working in China is difficult at best. Your every move is watched. The water is undrinkable and the air unbreathable. Its beyond crowded. The traffic is way past bad. Freeze in the winter. Roast in the summer. Choke all year round. The Chinese themselves, while peaceful and hard working, have many habits and manners that are just grating. The Chinese government eclipses ours hands down in its douche-baggery. Good bet if it was not for the potential gold mine, most Google employees and managers would jump at the chance to leave in a heartbeat.

Just think, every Chinese manufactured product we buy at Wal-Mart ultimately notches us ever so slightly toward that same standard of living ourselves. Yay?

/shrug. Chinese want to be more like Europeans and Americans while at the same time some think we are moving towards the same lifestyle as China. Eventually we all meet in the middle. Much of it hinges on how much of a nanny state the USA becomes. Even then, we will become more like Europe than we would ever become like China.

Still, our air is cleaner. We can talk shit about our government. We can tell jokes! We can look at most anything we want on the internet. We can admit to our mistakes. China is mostly learning about how to be consumers, but money or not they are still governed by a communist dictatorship.