Google v. China

[blessingx]

This could get interesting.

Official Google Blog: A new approach to China

[url=http://rawstory.com/2010/01/google-no-longer-continue-censoring-chinese-searches/]Google

[Duggeh]

A gentle underhand serve from an 8 year old to a cyborg Roger Federer. Whatever the outcome, China controls the game.

If they decide to say "Fine. Bye" They get to do what the fuck they want as they currently do. There will be more than one provider willing to step in in Googles place for that market and bend to the policies of the Chinese government.

If they decide to say "We capitulate. Lets give it a go." Then they'll get huge diplomatic and press gains in terms of human rights and open information, which they will deftly exploit despite the fact that in practical terms, they'll mean nothing much. They'll still be happy to execute any more British chaps who fall foul of their laws. (I actually didn't have a problem with that execution, but I digress)

I'll not comment on the politics further. I don't want to get into a dispute over ideology or opinions on world foreign policy. Google is making a very risky business decision here and I can't understand why. Unless its a surprisingly large effort to maintain or repair their image as "nice boys/good guys" in the technology industry at a time when they're being seen more and more as Microsoft 2.0

[Dusty Chalk]

China to Google: "We buy you."

[jinp6301]

What will suck is that everyone who is working for google china will probably be let go

[MomijiTMO]

Should be interesting. I like what Google is trying to do but I'm not sure it's going to achieve anything.

[Hopstretch]

Not so sure about that tennis match Doug. Web technologies have already shown themselves to have a lot of disruptive power in the context of a command-and-control society like China. I think the Chinese government is going to be very, very unhappy about having Google outside the tent pissing in.

From Google's point of view, I think they simply concluded (probably correctly) that China is a bad actor and the future profit potential is not worth the corollary risks -- economic and "political". Google has a lot to lose from the kind of state-sponsored economic espionage at issue here. I will bet you that none of their real secret sauce (algorithms, custom data center management code etc.) has been allowed to disseminate into the Google.cn organization because of the obvious personnel risks.

I think we're seeing evidence of a new category of international relations that has been evolving for a while under the radar -- clashes of interests between traditional states and supra-national corporate entities. It will be very, very interesting to see what form hostilities take in these cases!

[blessingx]

Along those lines, some commentary over at...

Scobleizer ? Exploring the 2010 Web

Also: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/technology/companies/14baidu.html

Edited January 13, 2010 by blessingx

[tkam]

Be interesting to see if Google can actually stay in China while providing uncensored search results. I kinda doubt it, but I like that they are threatening to pull out of China if they aren't allowed to.

[Dusty Chalk]

So apparently there's a very good reason for the hostilities towards China: Google to China: Fuck you

[Hopstretch]

Ouroboros thread disappears down own throat. Nom nom nom.

[MomijiTMO]

VeriSign's iDefense security lab has published a report with technical details about the recent cyberattack that hit Google and over 30 other companies. The iDefense researchers traced the attack back to its origin and also identified the command-and-control servers that were used to manage the malware.

The cyber-assault came to light on Tuesday when Google disclosed to the public that the Gmail Web service was targeted in a highly-organized attack in late December. Google said that the intrusion attempt originated from China and was executed with the goal of obtaining information about political dissidents, but the company declined to speculate about the identity of the perpetrator.

Citing sources in the defense contracting and intelligence consulting community, the iDefense report unambiguously declares that the Chinese government was, in fact, behind the effort. The report also says that the malicious code was deployed in PDF files that were crafted to exploit a vulnerability in Adobe's software.

"The source IPs and drop server of the attack correspond to a single foreign entity consisting either of agents of the Chinese state or proxies thereof," the report says.

The researchers have determined that there are significant similarities between the recent attack and a seemingly related one that was carried out in July against a large number of US companies. Both attacks were apparently managed through the same command-and-control servers.

"The servers used in both attacks employ the HomeLinux DynamicDNS provider, and both are currently pointing to IP addresses owned by Linode, a US-based company that offers Virtual Private Server hosting. The IP addresses in question are within the same subnet, and they are six IP addresses apart from each other," the report says. "Considering this proximity, it is possible that the two attacks are one and the same, and that the organizations targeted in the Silicon Valley attacks have been compromised since July."

If the report's findings are correct, it suggests that the government of China has been engaged for months in a massive campaign of industrial espionage against US companies.

Source

And here we were all blaming North Korea when it might have been the Chinese.

[manaox2]

And this is how WW III begins.

[blessingx]

Google anger at Chinese copycat site Goojje | News | TechRadar UK

China responds...

[Guest h.rav]

No surprise, when I was visiting China, I found out that virtually everything is copied.