Today's news: Google smacks China
January 13th 2010 01:42
Google has just issued a statement saying it has uncovered a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China". The email accounts targeted were those of human rights activists.
Google did not name the Chinese government, but it didn't have to. And it did say it was "no longer willing to continue censoring our results" on its Chinese search engine, as the government requires.
China may be the world's population leader and a global economic super-heavyweight, but this is a fight which it may want to back away from. Civil unrest is never far from the surface in any community ruled by a totalitarian regime, and the humiliation of a Google walk-out, and the focus it would bring on Beijing's heavy-handed approach to many social issues, will have it considering its response to Google's allegations very carefully.
Google is itself a super-heavyweight in the human conscious, and it will not have understaken this course of action lightly. In announcing the end of the co-operative search engine censorship agreement, Google has come out swinging. It decided to do more than put its hand up and complain. It decided to throw a swinging, stinging counter-punch.
That means the Chinese must react — to simply accept Google's smack on the bottom would be an enormous loss of face.
Google is playing hardball on this one, and the world awaits Beijing's reaction. But none more than a billion growingly affluent and cosmopolitan Chinese citizens who have hopes for a better world.
The New York Times
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Comment by Chris Champion
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Comment by Chris Champion
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Your point that Google has done poorly in China is an important one. According to this Wall Street Journal report, quoting comScore data, Microsoft holds about 5% of the Chinese search market, Google 14% and the Chinese Baidu 62%. That was as of November.
However, second place and 14% market share in the world's biggest market is gigantic. I can't believe, from a business practices point of view, that there is any reason in those numbers for Google to want to exit China.
You make no mention of the hacking accusations. Is that not a more reasonable explanation for Google's discontent?
But you are closer to the situation and the Chinese pulse. Let's see what happens.
Many thanks for visiting, and for your comments.