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News:
Google China Policy:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html
Question 1: If you were running a competing search tool how would you react to this announcement?
Question 2: How would your answer change if you were a partner of the GNI? please revisit GNI’s statement on Freedom of Expression http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/principles/index.php#18
&
Privacy http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/principles/index.php#19
Other updates:
Week 4 January 28th – we will be having a guest speaker, The Honorable Judge Donald Horowitz, who is also one of the co-authors of this weeks reading.
If you were scheduled to present that day, please come talk to me. We will likely be moving those reading to February 4th. More to come on this after I talk to the effected group.
Here is a little on the American Human Rights Court:
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is an autonomous judicial institution based in the city of San José, Costa Rica. It is part of Organization of American States (OAS), which serves to uphold and promote basic rights and freedoms in the Americas and is based in Washington DC. This would be a good topic for people to do further research on for a 5 minute in class presenation along with any of the other regional Human Rights courts.
{ 6 } Comments
I like this topic and would love to see the discussion flowing around here. I’ve read some materials including blogs in Chinese, people in China may not see this as a big deal since it’s Google.cn stop censoring the content, Google.com will still be there. Google just stop the censoring work for China, and surely China will do it by themselves. Only the service that Google.cn provided may be stopped in the future (and this one is interesting, I will mention it later.)
First, I visited Wiki for the censorship by Google , in order to understand what was the deal for Google to filter out the key words given by People’s Republic of China (PRC) government. It stated “In January 2006, Google affirmed its intent to filter certain keywords given to it by the government of the PRC. The restrictions applies to thousands of terms and websites.[12] The censored content appears on google.cn. ”
Second, from one of my friend in Shanghai helped me on the experiment. We try the “Tiananmen Square protests of 1989″ as key word on Google.com, the search results came up but most of them you got the following error message:
==========================================
Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage
Most likely causes:
You are not connected to the Internet.
The website is encountering problems.
There might be a typing error in the address.
What you can try:
Diagnose Connection Problems
More information
================================================
However, there is one result that’s click-able, and it lead to http://asianhistory.about.com/od/china/a/TiananmenSquare.htm.
Talking about if Google.cn stop the operation in China, other than censoring the content, the service Google.cn provided will also be end soon. There’s a service on Google.cn can help searching for mp3, and they can be downloaded or listened online, however, without the copyright. I just knew this from one of the blog post in Chinese, discussing about how Google.cn was actually different from Google.com. On this service they provided, I can see why.
It was interesting that everyone in class said it’s the business decision that Google made to pull out from China market. But almost none of the blog post online (in Chinese, either from China or Taiwan or other places) had this perspective. They mostly praised the moral courage that Google had (or Sergey M. Brin had, since the CEO Eric E. Schmidt was all for staying in China market.) to give up the biggest market in a single country.
I was thinking about translating one of the blog post I saw but I figure it was off topic on ripping Google.cn being evil and a follower on searching and online advertising business. But I would love to share if more people are interested in.
In short, the ethic part of this news is on whether Google are practicing their motto , they had the censorship with China before and they want to stop. Even this is a business decision, we may still look at the end result and see how Yahoo! and Microsoft, who ironically also initiators of GNI, react to this. Please give me feedback if any, thanks!
Update: New York Times today’s new “After Google’s Stand on China, U.S. Treads Lightly”
In this news, it stated that this was not only Google being hacked, but escalated the situation between the cyberattack and counteroffensive between China and USA. Although Google was still lack of strong evidence to confront China government, they had raised this issue to American intelligence and law enforcement officials.
This offers another reason that Google leaves China may not be only a business decision.
Copied from my blog:
http://ericshengbi.blogspot.com/2010/01/who-is-more-evil-google-or-chinese.html
Who is more evil, Google or the Chinese government?
To recap the emerging issue, Google said on Tuesday (1/12/2010) in its official blog that due to the recent “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” and continuous disagreement with the Chinese government on the censorship of search results, Google might shut down Google.cn as well as its offices in China.
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. After its 10 years serving, Google did change the world in terms of information flow. However, more and more issues come along with its success and domination. Copyright and privacy become everyday news to Google: copyright lawsuit over Digital Book Project in China, privacy lawsuit over Street View in the United States, and also many other cases all over the world. Don’t be evil seems more like a joke, and even Google itself has no definition of evil. While making information accessible globally, Google has no way to control the information consumption, because it is unable to know who is using the information for what purpose: a terrorist can simply use Google Map to get to know the environment of a target. Nevertheless, Google can control the information flow and decide how to use it either for business or for the great good, and even though we all understand our privacy must be offended to some point but we can do nothing about it – because Google is the rule maker. The same reason that we all know the American government should not send armies everywhere, but as they play the world police role, they rule the world.
Google’s leaving China is not because the hackers and censorship. It is hard to believe that such a giant can not handle the attacks, and when Google landed in China, they accepted to offer censored search service. Surprisingly, Google China has increased its market share significantly in the past six months according to the analysis, which suggests that the market is not the main reason either. But (I think) losing the confidence of operating in China is. Look back what happened since 2006:
The market share increases from 13.2% in 2006 to 32.8% in mid-2009 while the Chinese Internet users increases from 105 million to 338 million.
In June 2009, Google was asked twice to remove all its porn sites from search results, the news was broadcasted through all major channels including CCTV.
In December 2009, Google was sued by the Chinese author over illegal web book scan, later hundreds of authors joined to claim Google, and Google lost 125 million dollars.
In December 2009, Kai-Fu Lee, the founding president of Google China, announced his resignation and started a new career.
Everybody knows China has the largest potential market. But how to run business in China has always been a problem for all the foreign companies. Smart like Google, could not find efficient ways to resolve all kinds of issues, especially localization. Both Chinese laws and culture are so different from the American, the company never fully understood the environment, the government, and the people. Leaving lots of problem unsolved, Google China’s future looks not good at all – more censorship, more competitors, and more lawsuits?
On the other hand, the Chinese government, reacted “companies do business in China must follow the laws of the land”. It sends a clear message: if you want to play in my house, you must follow my rules. Note that the Chinese government is nothing like the ancient anymore, given the position and power of China in the world, the country is no longer afraid of any threats. As a developing country, being stable is one of the principles, which means, the laws like censorship will not change just because of Google or the critics from western countries. Transparency, openness, democracy will eventually be there in China, but it needs time and phases, (I do believe) the government is doing the right thing to protect people. Sadly, the issue now is not only between Google and the Chinese government, the US government is being involved too: Hillary Clinton demands explanation for the Google issue.
Anyway, if Google exits China, that would be the most stupid move ever, it will damage not only itself, but Chinese people and the rapidly growth market. The Chinese government will never compromise. In long-term, it is also a huge loss for the Chinese users. In the following days, keep an eye on Google, the Chinese government, the US government, the Chinese people, and Microsoft/Yahoo/Baidu, lots of interesting things will happen for sure.
To make it more interesting:
In 2006, Yanhong Li, the founder of Baidu, predicted that Google will entirely lose the Chinese search market. Source (in Chinese).
And one remaining question is, Google said nothing about how the Chinese users should deal with the issue. It hurts if I was using Goolge services in China. So far as I know from lots of Chinese forums, people started to backup their Gmail data.
Footnote: I am a Chinese student study abroad in the US, who knows both the Chinese government and Google well. It stands for personal opinion only.
FYI, there are many references in my post but they are all missing here, please access to my blog (the provided link) for the full blog.
In response to a couple of things that Sheng said:
1. Sheng mentions that outsiders to China have a difficult time operating effectively in the Chinese environment. But I’m sure that Google hired/were approached by Chinese citizens (such as Kai-Fu Lee, the founding president of Google China – mentioned in your post) to run Google.cn. Shouldn’t they have the know how to run the Chinese business effectively?
2. Sheng also said that: “if Google exits China, that would be the most stupid move ever, it will damage not only itself, but Chinese people and the rapidly growth market.”
I agree that it could potentially lose money making potential in the long-term, but you told us that they had only a small share of the market in comparison with Chinese competitors, so perhaps it’s not that detrimental to them after all.
In response to what Sheng mentioned that Chinese Government is sending the clear message ” if you want to play in my house, you must follow my rules……As a developing country, being stable is one of the principles, which means, the laws like censorship will not change just because of Google or the critics from western countries.” I somewhat agree with your point of view. Yet, in this google event, I found that rules you just mentioned about is called “Self-censorship.” In other words, there isn’t a written/clearly specified list to let Western companies like Google to screen or filter information that Chinese Government don’t want to see on the internet. This leave a grey area to let Chinese government to block the Western websites anytime the government want. So, how will these Western companies protect themselves in the market with “non clear rules?” I don’t think Google’s action should be treated as an threat. In fact, it reveals the weak point of “Chinese Style self-censorship” in China.