Will Google Leave China?

Here are some of the major points, to sum up:

  • a fairly significant attack was made on Google from China in mid-December, and they “have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists”
  • Many Chinese human rights activists’ Gmail accounts appear to have been compromised
  • In light of this, Google is no longer willing to censor results on Google.cn
  • They’ll be having talks with the Chinese government about whether they can do this, and if not, an option is to close Google in China.

This is pretty big news. What do you guys think?

I think google would be entirely correct to leave china.
They are offering a free product, but it doesn’t get appreciated over there.
They have to do a lot of work (I suppose) to censor all kind of websites, and in return their servers get hacked.
I read somewhere else that in the process of hacking the accounts of the human rights activists, several accounts of "innocent bystanders were hacked as well.

Here in Holland we have a saying “Don’t look into the mouth of a horse that was given to you.”
(for those totally unfamiliar with horses, by looking at the mouth you can see how healthy the animal is).

I think china is looking into the mouth of the horse that was “given” to them.

yeah… i think that too that Google will leave China because of the issue about the the attacking accounts of the chinese…

i’ll cry, seriously, most of me business comes from google.

but then again, my first and only successful ad site was blocked here too one day and survived.

seriously though, they play a different game here,

did you know there are sales executives calling you here to get you to do 12 months ad contracts on google?

Commissions are based on these, and you have to at least put in a certain amount of cash into the accounts, to be used up as you like.

I think it’s the best move Google can make, they have been trying to play nice with the Chinese government (censoring information) purely out of the wish to hold business there, and I didn’t really think that qualified under their motto of “do no evil”. It’s nice to see that Google are not letting such an action go unresolved, so kudos on them for lifting the censorship mirror and saying it’s all or nothing :slight_smile:

Unless of course it’s a business decision that have wanted to make for a long time and the Gmail attack has come at a convenient time for them to use as an excuse.

Gmail is attacked by somebody appearing to be inside China, so Google decides they are no longer willing to censor their search results in China. How are those two things linked?

Sorry but how exactly would carrying out an action which will ultimately lead your entire service being blacklisted by a communist nations firewall qualify as a “good business decision”, the chinese government won’t allow an uncensored Google to roam free, their pretty much dumping a potential billion individual user-base :slight_smile:

Horrible business decision but good ethical one…

Does anyone think that the Chinese gov’t cares whether Google does business in China or not? They may make some noise to save face but in the long run if Google doesn’t do it then someone else will.

And the Chinese government will continue to try to hack into gmail accounts regardless.

For the sake of respecting the very bottom of human rights, I say this is a pretty fine decision, should they pull through. There may never be absolute freedom of speech, but with China - or rather the Chinese government - every baby step is a worthy step in the right direction.

What do human rights have to-do with it kohoutek? It’s not like the Chinese firewall is an inhumane act. If you think the Chinese firewall constitutes a human rights abuse, I would direct the argument right back to any business which blocks employees accessing certain websites and parents who block their kids going where they want. Not that I agree with them doing it or anything, but I certainly don’t see it as a human rights abuse violation, after all if free speech was a legitimate human right, all those seriously damaged people who post nasty stuff on the net would be legally entitled to do it. :rolleyes:

Sorry, but I’m not going to argue with you here, Alex, as it would be getting very political and heated and I’m not in the mood or in the right frame of mind to debate delicate issues such as this. All I will say is that I could not disagree with you more and that we seem to be very, VERY different in our views.

No worries, I agree that it’s bad for china to be doing it anyway (and agree with Google’s decision) :slight_smile:

I have not been a fan of the big G and I do not like their dictatorship all over Internet but now they have really the occasion to make a good move.

I can reconsider my personal opinion on the big G policy if they will close to Chinese government request also if this mean close the business in China.

Money is not all, profit is not all, business is not all…. human rights are far more important and this is the way thing can really change.

Look some videos on the issue…

It’s interesting that you put “good business decision” in quotation marks because I didn’t say that. I said a “business decision”, notice I did not say good.

None of us know the internal business affairs of Google. Perhaps they are not meeting their targets on market share in China. Perhaps they finally realised they weren’t going to make money while having their hands tied behind their back by the Chinese government.

You also didn’t answer my other previous question. Google uncovers an attack on Gmail from China, so they decide to review the availability of their search engine in China. As I said before, how are these two things linked?

Perhaps I am cynical but I don’t think Google is going to sacrifice the potential revenue available from China because their morals are more important.

“embedding disabled by request”

“watch on youtube” link doesn’t work either (it’s prevented by my popup blocker)

why don’t you just post the youtube urls here. instead of making us visit your site

Sorry about that, was just in order to save time, I did not realized that the first 2 videos were not made by run embeded … not big deal…

here they are:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH9NUABJzV4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQV8-Piujz0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XImsSgdr4fg

Well that’s an unusual attitude given that this is a forum and by it’s very nature is in place for discussion and debate. Be free with your opinions, it’s how we progress and learn about ourselves and others. If this turns into a debate on human rights then fine, that’s the beauty of organic discussion.

I agree with Alex but take it a step further, this is not a ‘human rights’ issue firstly because there’s no such thing. The guy with the biggest army decides what your rights are and you only have a say in it if your army is bigger than his, none of us have the ‘right’ to anything. Secondly, Australia are currently implementing a firewall ‘filter’ to provide selective services to Australian internet users in an effort to ‘protect’ people, particularly children, from exposure to potentially damaging content. Is that a human rights abuse? What difference does the motivation make, it’s still censorship. Should Google close google.com.au?

Google figured that limited internet access was better than nothing in China and the way that the article reads suggests that they’re pissed off with the chinese government and are calling their bluff, good for them, especially if they’re forgoing profits for ethical reasons, I thoroughly approve. I can almost forgive them adding ‘billboards’ to their streetview service now…:stuck_out_tongue:

They don’t have a ‘dictatorship’… they have a successful product. They’re also an ethical company as they’re currently demonstrating.

And you know what? If there was a company that was trying to take over the world (or rather take control of the worl from the oil companies), I’d rather it was google.

About big G dictatorship I do not change my mind as it is not ANYMORE just a succesfful product, too much is at stake, and is another issue (maybe can be matter of another post if mods agree).

About ethical company I do hope will be so… this China issue can determine that (at leats for my humble opinion).

HP as far as I know is already on the ethical company road (several issues to support) and it pays! My present laptop is Hp my printer/scan is Hp my future desktop will be Hp. Beside are good products.

How are there no human rights? Of course there are. I won’t argue with you that human rights are directly linked with power, however, making it a joke, unfortunately. I agree with that entirely.

If your argument would have been that it is audacious of me to project my ethical standards onto others, then I’d say, you’re absolutely right.

If Google decides to move out of China, and if the reason for these attacks have anything to do with their decision, then I’d say that it’s a good move.
If they do it out of pure business motivation, then I’d say that is their “right” to do so as well. I have never had any issues with Google.

Eventually, the motivation, as you stated, does not make a difference. I would take great liking to the idea if ethical reasons did have something to do with it as well. :slight_smile: