I must say I'll have to take a step back from my previous position/postings
having read this article.
I just can't figure out their /ANGLE/. 
</cynic>
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html
Well played, google?
/kc
I for one would be really happy to see them follow through with this. I was
very disappointed when they agreed to censor search results, although I can
understand why they did so from a business standpoint... it seemed to go
against the google mantra of "do no evil"...
I'm skeptical if they'll go through with it...
Stefan Fouant, CISSP, JNCIE-M/T
www.shortestpathfirst.net
GPG Key ID: 0xB5E3803D
Seems logical, after all.
Considering the (bad) performances of Google search engine in China compared to Chinese competitors, and considering the fact that wouldn't change a bit in the future, closing offices wouldn't be a bad thing.
That doesn't mean closing R&D centers.
Ben
Le 13/01/2010 06:24, Ken Chase a �crit :
Baidu has ~63%, Google has ~31%. Q4 2009 was Google's best Q in China ever.
While I admit that 31% is not the market share Google usually enjoys, it certainly is not horrible. Most companies would love to have 1/3 of a market as big and growing as China.
Oh, and I prefer Google over Baidu when I'm in China (which is frequently). Their results are better, and I can get some in English.
According to their spokesperson, they have already stopped censoring.
That sounds a bit iffy to me. It's one thing to say "we want to stop censoring, and will pull out if you don't let us", and "we are breaking the law, nah, nah, nah".
You don't like the law, don't do biz in that country. But blatantly breaking a law is bad joo-joo.
* Patrick W. Gilmore:
You don't like the law, don't do biz in that country. But blatantly
breaking a law is bad joo-joo.
I think we all consider their approach to copyright law refreshing and
useful, so there are certainly laws worth breaking. 
From the article:
"Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. "
I have orders of magnitude fewer users than gmail does, and often look at their mailboxes (with their consent, of course), but I still couldn't tell you the political position of any of them (apart from the politicians).
The ability to automatically discern users' political positions from their inbox is not one that any email provider reasonably needs.
Anthony
I for one would be really happy to see them follow through with this. I was
very disappointed when they agreed to censor search results, although I can
understand why they did so from a business standpoint... it seemed to go
against the google mantra of "do no evil"...I'm skeptical if they'll go through with it...
According to their spokesperson, they have already stopped censoring.
That sounds a bit iffy to me. It's one thing to say "we want to stop censoring, and will pull out if you don't let us", and "we are breaking the law, nah, nah, nah".
I assume that this is coupled with the message that they will pull out of China.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8455712.stm
I think it is the modern corporate equivalent of recalling your ambassador.
Regards
Marshall
They probably haven't yet
Jérôme Fleury wrote:
You don't like the law, don't do biz in that country. But blatantly breaking a law is bad joo-joo.
OT.
Please don't say "joo-joo" every time the TechCrunch folks see that
they get diarrhea
Cheers
Jorge
PS what about all the property and copyright laws being supposedly
broken over there ?
That is a horrible name for a product. Just saying.
You don't like the law, don't do biz in that country. But blatantly
breaking a law is bad joo-joo.
Is it?
http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&um=1&sa=1&q=civil+disobedience
It's arguably something that gmail users consent to when they give Google rights to index and process their mail, though.
Joe
You should most likely read their terms of service and that would
actually answer this instead of guessing. Also, if your reading your
own employee's email, that is most likely perfectly legal.
I've read the terms of service. I may be interpreting them incorrectly, sure, but I'm not guessing.
If your comment was not directed at me, but was a more general recommendation for all people who might guess rather than read, then sure, I agree.
Joe
It was to others But in the process of troubleshooting, an admin
may come across something say by looking at a bounce message or other
statistics such as which domains the user sends to on a regular basis.
cPanel even comes with Eximstats which does some of that for you.
If you can tell the political position of the politicians by looking at their
mailboxes, you can probably tell the political position of a suspected human
rights activist by looking at their mailbox. Remember - the Chinese government
doesn't care about the users who's political position can't be identified.
They care about the ones that *can* be identified as having an inconvenient
viewpoint...
In a message written on Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 05:31:44PM +0100, Anthony Uk wrote:
I have orders of magnitude fewer users than gmail does, and often look
at their mailboxes (with their consent, of course), but I still couldn't
tell you the political position of any of them (apart from the politicians).
It's not clear to me you have to read any e-mail to figure out that
"help_us_free_tibet@gmail.com" might be someone who's taking a
political position. A search company may also, say, look for e-mail
addresses listed on the web sites that must be censored, and when
it's the same list being hacked, draw a conclusion.
It's also possible that far less questionable means are being utilized. Perhaps there are a sufficient number of pro-free-speech'ers at Google.cn (which is presumably largely composed of Chinese nationals) that are privy to such information. It only takes one guy going "hey! I know some of these email addresses!"...
Nathan