Sinocircle

Google Notes

So google has pulled back to hongkong and seems to have safe haven there, underlining just how independent hongkong may be with its deal to maintain british freedoms until 2047.  And there has been much bluster, from China claiming that the cyber attacks from the school in Jinan were impossible, because though the school teaches programming it doesn’t have an internet connection, to arguments that google got political first, falsely bringing issues on tibet or tianamen up in search rankings.  Baidu.com, google’s rival here, does this but only when paid.  So people cannot believe that google does not do it, and thus the argument goes that google must do it for the U.S. government.

Another thought I’ve been having is how did google ever capture 30% of the Chinese search market.  I want to understand more what this means because I have never seen a Chinese use google.  Professors may use google.  Foreigners use google.  But to go even further, why would a Chinese want to use google?

So I tend to go with the crowd that thinks China will quickly forget google, because they never did have any interest in it.

To quote today’s new york times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/world/asia/24china.html

But China also does not acknowledge to its own people that it censors the Internet to exclude a wide range of political and social topics that its leaders believe could lead to instability. It does not release information on the number of censors it employs or the technology it uses for the world’s most sophisticated Internet firewall. Its 350 million Internet users, many with fast broadband connections, are assured they have the same effectively limitless access to information and communications that the rest of the world enjoys.

Google publicly challenged that stance in January, and reinforced its ideological opposition to China’s policies by finally pulling the plug on its mainland search engine after a failed round of talks with Chinese officials. That forced Chinese leaders to defend their control of the Web, which they did partly with an outburst of nationalism and vitriol.

The cost, at least with some influential sectors of its own society, could be steep. In the technology sector, Google is viewed as an innovator that has spurred rapid development of the Chinese Web. Its departure will leave some Chinese companies with greater influence, but could also stifle competition, some fear.

“Google is good at innovation, and when it leaves, the rest of the companies in China will lack motivation. Without its countervailing power, the industry won’t be as healthy,” said Zhang Yunquan, a professor at the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Fang Xingdong, chief executive of Chinalabs.com, said the vast majority of Chinese Internet companies invested little in research and “simply copy each other’s technology.” With Google’s departure, their profits may rise, but China’s Web space will begin to stagnate, he predicted.

Despite China’s mantra that the Google issue should not be “politicized,” it is, at the end of the day, highly politicized, especially inside China.

Xiao Qiang, founder and editor in chief of China Digital Times, said that China’s leaders once saw the Internet as having both political and commercial uses that balanced each other to a degree. “But increasingly they see it as a political space,” he said.