Google vs China thread

[Chanakyaa]

Haha probably not. China has a huge talent pool and a more sophisticated software industry.

Well See This. It doesnt go well with ur statement.

 

[AnGrz_Z_K_Jailer]

China says ways to resolve Google issue, US cautious

BEIJING: China sought on Friday to play down a threat by Google Inc to quit the country on hacking and censorship concerns, saying any decision by Significant China related cyber events the Internet search giant would not affect U.S. trade ties.

The United States said it was too soon to tell how economic ties would be affected, but added free information flow was crucial to China's maturing economy.

A spokesman for China's Commerce Ministry said there were many ways to resolve the Google issue, but repeated that all foreign companies, Google included, must abide by Chinese laws.

"Any decision made by Google will not affect Sino-U.S. trade and economic relations, as the two sides have many ways to communicate and negotiate with each other," spokesman Yao Jian told a regular news briefing in Beijing.

"We are confident about developing healthy trade and economic ties with the United States."

The issue risks becoming another irritant in China's relationship with the United States, already strained by arguments over the Chinese currency's exchange rate, trade protectionism and U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

The United States has backed Google's decision to no longer support China's censoring of Internet searches, and has raised the issue at a diplomatic level.

"It seems to me that the principles that Google is trying to uphold are not just important in a moral or rights framework, but are also of very considerable economic importance," senior White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers said.

"I think it's too early to assess what all of the effects will be," he added when asked if the dispute would mark a turning point in the U.S. economic relationship with China.

Washington has long been worried about Beijing's cyber-spying programme. A congressional advisory panel said in November that the Chinese government appeared increasingly to be penetrating U.S. computers to gather useful data for its military.

Playing down the concerns raised by Google, rival Microsoft Corp said it had no plan to pull out of China.

"I don't understand how that helps anything. I don't understand how that helps us, and I don't understand how that helps China," said Steve Ballmer, CEO of the world's largest software maker.

Microsoft has high hopes for its Bing Internet search engine in China, which has only a small share of the market but could benefit if Google, the No. 2 player behind dominating local rival Baidu Inc, pulls out.

China's population of Web users grew to 384 million by the end of 2009, a jump of nearly one-third in one year, an official report showed on Friday, underscoring the growing scope and business allure of the country's Internet

Source : China says ways to resolve Google issue, US cautious- Internet-Infotech-The Economic Times

 

[gpit]

Microsoft's Ballmer: We're staying in China

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said his company intends to stay in business inside of China and obey the laws of that country, following Google's announcement that it is considering going home.

We've been quite clear that we are going to operate in China, (and) we're going to abide by the law," Ballmer told CNBC following a meeting at the White House with President Obama on ways the government can use technology to cut costs. "Cyberattacks are an unfortunate way of life," he said.

Google's declaration that it might exit the Chinese market unless it's allowed to offer an uncensored search engine has rocked the technology and business world this week, putting pressure on its rivals to explain their position toward China. Google's actions came after it revealed that it was the target of a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google."

Microsoft had previously said that its e-mail system had not been breached, but had declined to comment on the broader question of its future in China.

Ballmer declined to directly address reports that a new unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer was partially to blame for the attacks on Google and other companies.

"If the issue is with us, we'll work through it with all the important parties. We have a whole team of people that responds very real-time to any report that it has something to do with our software, which we don't know yet."

Microsoft's Ballmer: We're staying in China | Relevant Results - CNET News

 

[gpit]

Levi's Faced Earlier Challenge in China

By JAMES T. AREDDY
SHANGHAI—Google Inc.'s challenge to Beijing is not a first: Levi Strauss & Co. 17 years ago walked away from China.

Today, Levi's brand jeans are produced in China, and in Beijing last November the company opened its 501st store in the country.

What happened in between?

In 1993, the iconic San Francisco maker of dungarees declared it would end relationships with contractors in China because of what it called that country's "pervasive violation of human rights."

At the time, multinational corporations were pouring into developing countries, looking for cheap labor. Not far behind were human-rights activists, confident that Western companies were a vehicle for social change: Campus demonstrations demanding big U.S. companies sever ties to South Africa had just helped dismantle that nation's apartheid policies.

Two decades ago, as now, China was attractive for its fast growth, cheap work force and huge population. But in China, activists had leverage: disgust at the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Few foreign companies were making money in China in those days and fewer still were ready to shout down activists wielding evidence of dangerous working conditions, prison labor and other workplace abuses.


Family-controlled Levi's had branded itself a company with a conscience. Robert Haas, its chairman and chief executive at the time, ordered a review of human rights in 40 countries, which determined that only China and Myanmar had rights violations so troublesome that pulling out made the most sense.

"They were at the forefront of all the compliance issues," said an American executive in the textile business who at the time worked with Li & Fung Ltd., a Hong Kong trading firm.

Everyone in the industry was aware, he said, that the U.S. company's strategies helped make it "a big deal" in the rag trade to consider a factory's lighting, ventilation, toilets and cafeteria on par with prices and production quality.

Parallels between Levi's and Google are strong. Each is defending a brand steeped in American values. Also, Levi's was small in China, buying only $50 million of trousers and shirts, while Google is the runner up in Internet searches in China after Baidu Inc. Each of the U.S. companies was plugging China into pre-existing global networks—Levi's with its supply chain and Google via the World Wide Web. Their actions sparked political storms.

In the spring of 1993, Levi's announcement hit a Washington embroiled in its annual debate on the renewal of Most Favored Nation trading status, a wrenching review that linked Beijing's record on human rights to U.S. tariff policies. President Bill Clinton, who campaigned talking of the "Butchers of Beijing," found himself playing down human rights to promote China's trading status.

"If you look at the Levi Strauss and Google situations ,it's important to see there are similarities but there are differences," said Sharon Hom, a spokeswoman for the group Human Rights In China. "The impact is much bigger today because it is making it into a public debate in China. Not everyone needs a pair of jeans but everyone needs information."

Mr. Haas, who led Levi's pullback from China, defended the company's human-rights positions. In a speech quoted in the book "Levi's Children: Coming to Terms with Human Rights in the Global Marketplace," Mr. Haas said "decisions which emphasize cost to the exclusion of all other factors don't serve the company and its shareholders' long term interests."

China's reaction to Levi's move, the book stated, was to argue human rights had nothing to do with it. A foreign ministry spokesman boasted, "There are tens of thousands of foreign companies in China."

How much difference Levi's stand made to factory conditions in China is hard to quantify; the company itself was comfortable enough to return in 2008.

"Conditions in many multinational-affiliated factories have improved because the focus has been put on them," said Geoffrey Crothall, editor of China Labor Bulletin in Hong Kong. "But conditions in Chinese factories as a whole haven't."

From the beginning, Levi's said it hoped one day to return to China. When it announced plans to do so five years after its pullout, it drew fierce criticism from the human-rights community. "At no time did we believe or did we intend to influence the human-rights practices across China," a Levi's spokesman said at the time. "All we can do is try to improve the conditions in factories that work on our behalf."

Today, the Levi's name appears across urban China. On Shanghai's main shopping street, Levi's shops stand blocks from each other and dozens of flags with the company name flutter from the avenue's lampposts. Levi's advertises on televisions in the city's taxis and has its name plastered onto the sides of city buses.

Levi Strauss's History in China of Exit, Re-Entry - WSJ.com

-----

For businessmen/capitalists, profit is the first and foremost important. Everything else will be considered, but in secondary position.

Levi left China because it had been hard to make profit then. It returns to China, because it can make profit. Simple like that.

Only politicians/lawyers always try to make simple things complex, for their own profit, businessmen/capitalists/technicians always try to make complex things simple.

 

[grey boy 2]

Microsoft, HP fail to back Google's China move: FT - People's Daily Online Jan 15 2010

Google's threat to withdraw from China failed to win support from other top industry executives who said that their enthusiasm for the country was undimmed.

Google announced on Tuesday that it would no longer filter search results in China and said it may be forced to pull out of the world's largest online market of 360 million users.

However, Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, described the affair as "the Google problem" and said: "Every large institution is being hacked. I don't think it's a fundamental change in the security environment on the internet."

He refused to comment on whether Microsoft would now stop censoring results on its Bing search service in China, but said that the software company saw a big business opportunity in China.

Mark Hurd, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, described China as "an amazing market with tremendous growth". Strong demand from Chinese customers was one of the main supports for the US tech industry last year.

Both executives also played down any wider threat to internet security from what Google had described as a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" that had been aimed at more than 20 other companies. "I'd hate to run off on this one example and say it's a threat to the evolution of the IT industry," Mr Hurd said.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Thursday that China's Internet is open and welcomes international companies.

Source: China Daily

 

[applesauce]

^^^ so india is outsource destination? what ur point? that says nothing about availability of people for it jobs. china does little outsourcing in this, it has its own massive market which is larger than indias

 

[grey boy 2]

Google agrees to remove site promoting racist views of indigenous Australians - People's Daily Online Jan 15 2010

Google has agreed to take down links to a website that promotes racist views of indigenous Australians.

Aboriginal man Steve Hodder-Watt recently discovered the U.S.-based site by searching "Aboriginal and Encyclopedia" in the search engine.

He tried to modify the entry on Encyclopedia Dramatica, a satirical and extremely racist version of Wikipedia, but was blocked from doing so.

Hodder-Watt then undertook legal action, that resulted in Google acknowledging its legal responsibility to remove the offensive site.

His lawyer, George Newhouse, says the site is "one of the most offensive sorts of racial vilification you could possibly find".

"It portrays indigenous Australians in the most unsavoury light possible, and you wouldn't want a child stumbling across it," he told Australian Broadcasting Company on Friday.

Newhouse says Google agreed to take the link down after he filed an official complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission. They agreed Thursday night to take down the sites, he said.

Source:Xinhua

 

[third eye]

Wonder why China is so scared of its own people ?

 

[applesauce]

some very simple things, google (i used it often) does not have the power nor wealth to demand the chinese government to do anything, by announcing they could pull out publicly its basically over for them in china, the CCP will never bow to such external pressure when it has very little to lose in keeping the censors. though google maket right now is small in china a few million profit a year vs billions globally, this incident will make it extremely hard should they would to go back to china in the future.

 

[grey boy 2]

Google Sets Censorship Precedent In India

"Censorship varies from country to country but India, home to a sixth of the world's population, appears to be shaping up much like China. Not far behind everyone else, Google has increasingly censored websites with an incident where a very popular politician died and Google forcibly deleted and dissolved a group on Orkut where offensive comments about the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh were posted. An official from India's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said, 'If you are doing business here, you should follow the local law, the sentiments of the people, the culture of the country. If somebody starts abusing Lord Rama on a Web site, that could start riots.' The lengthy opinion piece calls attention to the beginnings of a definitive lack of free speech online for Indian citizens. A spokeswoman for the 'Do No Evil' company explained, 'India does value free speech and political speech. But they are weighing the harm of free speech against violence in their streets.'"
http://www.5ty.org/n1566837-google-sets-censorship-precedent-in-india.cfm

 

[SinoIndusFriendship]

some very simple things, google (i used it often) does not have the power nor wealth to demand the chinese government to do anything, by announcing they could pull out publicly its basically over for them in china, the CCP will never bow to such external pressure when it has very little to lose in keeping the censors. though google maket right now is small in china a few million profit a year vs billions globally, this incident will make it extremely hard should they would to go back to china in the future.

What's even worse is this zionist tactic at racist demonization of Chinese offends all Asians not just Chinese. Same thing with that loser Steven Spielberg who attempted and failed. Just like we have Zhang Yimou and a billion others who can rise up to fill his shoes, we have Baidu and a billion other budding entrepreneurs who can rise up to the challenge.

 

[gubbi]

Chinese authorities fingered in Google, Yahoo attacks

Someone finally said it.

A security consulting firm that Google brought in to investigate an attack last month — the one that compromised the Gmail accounts of two Chinese political activists — told Computerworld today that they “believe the attack code was designed and launched with support from Chinese authorities.”

Yahoo was also a target of the same attack, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday afternoon.

This explains the involvement of the U.S. State Department, which met with Chinese diplomats this week. The department is drafting a formal denouncement which will put the heat directly on Premier Wen Jiabao to conduct an investigation.

Mandiant, a security incident response and forensics firm based in Washington, D.C., worked with Google to reverse-engineer the attack. Carlos Carrillo, a principal consultant with the firm, spoke to Computerworld’s Gregg Keizer on Friday:

Carrillo was the project manager for the Google investigation. During an interview Friday, he frequently chose his words carefully, saying that there was much he couldn’t discuss because the work was ongoing.

“The malware was unique,” Carrillo said. “It had unique characteristics … it was … let’s just say it was unique.”

When asked if the code quality pointed toward Chinese state support, Carrillo answered, “I would say so.”

It now appears that for some weeks, Google may have had ample evidence that the Chinese government was behind the break-ins, and that the State Department confronted Chinese authorities with that evidence.

 

[gubbi]

US to protest formally to China over Google 'attacks'

The US state department says it will make a formal protest to China over alleged cyber-attacks on the internet search giant, Google.

A spokesman said the US would demand an explanation in the coming days.

Google this week threatened to pull out of China because of what it said were hacking attacks and censorship; Beijing has tried to play down the threat.

Another US internet giant, Yahoo, is also reported to have been targeted by hackers in China.

"We will be issuing a formal demarche to the Chinese government in Beijing on this issue in the coming days," said state department spokesperson PJ Crowley.

"It will express our concern for this incident and request information from China as to an explanation of how it happened and what they plan to do about it."

There are also reports that Yahoo, another US search engine, had noticed it had been a target of Chinese hacking attacks, prior to Google's public acknowledgment of its own fears.

However, Yahoo has not given any official confirmation of this.

'Open' internet

In response to Google's concerns, China has said that foreign internet firms are welcome to do business there "according to the law".

Google had stated that cyber-attacks originating in China aimed at rights activists, and increased web censorship, might force it to end its China operations.

Jiang Yu, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, insisted the internet was "open" in China.

Google announced late on Tuesday that it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine - google.cn.

China's internet is open and the Chinese government encourages development of the internet Jiang Yu, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman

The search engine said it would hold talks with the government in the coming weeks to look at operating an unfiltered search engine within the law in the country, though no changes to filtering have yet been made.

When Google launched google.cn in 2006, it agreed to censor some search results - such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Tibetan independence or Falun Gong - as required by the Chinese government.

Google currently holds about one-third of the Chinese search market, far behind Chinese rival Baidu, which has more than 60%.

China has more internet users - about 350 million - than any other country and provides a lucrative search engine market worth an estimated $1bn (£614m) last year.

The CEO of Microsoft has said that the software giant had no plans to pull out of China, and played down Google's fears.

"I don't understand how that helps anything. I don't understand how that helps us and I don't understand how that helps China," said Steve Ballmer.

"There are attacks every day. I don't think there was anything unusual," Mr Ballmer added.

lol at Steve ballmer....doh! ..The Chinese afterall used a critical flaw in IE to hack google!!

 

[gubbi]

PRUDEN: Google tells China: No more dirty work

By Wesley Pruden

OPINION/ANALYSIS:

Once upon a time the city desk at the morning newspaper was the place to call to settle bets. A city desk could expect a flurry of calls just before the bars closed. Who was Ruth Roman's first husband? Who won the 1937 Rose Bowl? What was the real name of the last Curley of the Three Stooges?

Nobody much calls city desks any longer -- desk men, like everyone else, hide behind voice mail -- and now it's Google that usually tells the curious minds who want to know that Miss Roman's first husband was Mortimer Hall, that Pittsburgh defeated Washington 21 to 0 in the 1937 Rose Bowl and the last of three actors who played Curley was Joe Besser.

But Google is important for other things, too, as China learned when the popular search engine told Beijing that it would no longer participate as a censor and would, if need be, leave the Middle Kingdom altogether. No more lies by omission.

Shortly after it officially told the Chinese to buzz off, the Google Web site answered questions about the infamous massacre at Tiananmen Square and other "sensitive" events the Chinese government pretends never happened and tries to punish anyone who doesn't play its game. Google even got an assist from Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, who is said to be throwing her weight, such as it is, behind the campaign against China's suppression of speech (and thought). She has already met with executives of Google and its rival, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems, one of the designers of the Chinese Internet technology to talk about how to deal with China's war on free inquiry.

The Google decision is remarkable because big corporations rarely put principle above profit, or even appear to, and indeed Google's decision is probably good business in the long run. Google's business in China lags far behind the Beijing government's own search engine, which it keeps on a short leash. In China, no news is good news.

Nevertheless, after Google's announcement a steady stream of Chinese Internet users appeared at the Google headquarters in Beijing to lay flowers on the company's colorful logo arrayed on the front lawn.

Wei Jing-sheng, the Chinese dissident who lives in exile in the United States after spending 18 years in a Chinese prison cell for speaking against his government's abuse of human rights, applauded Google for taking "an important step" to protect such rights online. "Through international pressure," he said, "finally a big business in the West has come realize its own conscience. Some Western businesses thought that by making compromises with the Chinese communists' regime, they could do business as they wished. However, this is impossible because the Chinese government would not be satisfied."

In fact, Google first tried to play the fool's game. It did Beijing's work for it, keeping "embarrassing" facts off its China service, explaining in artless argle-bargle that "the benefits of increased access to information for people in China outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results." But some gratitude. Google says that beginning in September "highly sophisticated" hackers systematically stole certain company intellectual property, and 20 other financial, technology, media and chemical companies were similarly targeted.

The London Daily Telegraph reports that British intelligence agencies warned the British government three years ago that China was one of several nations trying to wriggle through firewalls guarding sensitive British government databases. Last year, the Telegraph revealed, researchers in Toronto discovered a large cyber-espionage network called GhostNet which had prowled the Internet databases of embassies and agencies of more than a hundred nations, looking for sensitive information. A month later, hackers believed to be working for the Beijing government broke into Pentagon computers and filched details of the new Joint Strike Fighter.

Pulling the chain of Chinese officials is not difficult. Computers at the French embassy in Beijing were hacked last month after President Nicolas Sarkozy entertained the Dalai Lama in Paris, according the exiled leader of Tibet the high honor that American presidents have sometimes been too timid to do. But after the Chinese objected to the French objecting to the theft of its intellectual property, France apologized for having noticed. Curley and his brother stooges would have given someone a poke in the eye.

Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

 

[gubbi]

Microsoft admits Explorer used in Google China hack

Microsoft has admitted that its Internet Explorer was a weak link in the recent attacks on Google's systems that originated in China.

The firm said in a blog post on Thursday that a vulnerability in the browser could allow hackers to remotely run programs on infected machines.

Following the attack, Google threatened to end its operations in China.

Microsoft has released preliminary guidance to mitigate the problem and is working on a formal software update.

So far, Microsoft "has not seen widespread customer impact, rather only targeted and limited attacks exploiting Internet Explorer 6".

"Based upon our investigations, we have determined that Internet Explorer was one of the vectors used in targeted and sophisticated attacks against Google and possibly other corporate networks," said Microsoft's director of security response Mike Reavey in the post.

'Unfortunate'

Security firm McAfee told news agency AFP that the attacks on Google, which targeted Chinese human rights activists worldwide, showed a level of sophistication above that of typical, isolated cyber criminal efforts.

McAfee's vice-president of threat research Dmitri Alperovitch told AFP that although the firm had "no proof that the Chinese are behind this particular attack, I think there are indications though that a nation-state is behind it".

The recent spate of attacks was alleged to have hit more than 30 companies including Google and Adobe, but security firms have since said that such invasions are routine.

Mr Reavey echoed this in the post.

"Unfortunately cyber crime and cyber attacks are daily occurrences in the online world. Obviously, it is unfortunate that our product is being used in the pursuit of criminal activity. We will continue to work with Google, industry leaders and the appropriate authorities to investigate this situation."