

A Deeper Look Into Google's 800-Pound Panda Problem - prole
http://neutralground.blogg.se/2010/january/draft-jan-25-2010.html

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prole
Disclosure:

I am the author of this blog post. I previously worked in IT before coming to
China almost a year ago. Currently, I teach English and enjoy reading,
researching, and writing with the free time this new profession affords me.

I've lurked HN for a while, but haven't given back in any way until today. My
friend enjoyed this piece and encouraged me to share it to a wider audience,
so here you are.

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bilbo0s
Wow, where are you at?

It sounds like you are hearing a lot of pro-Google sentiment, but here in
Ningbo, all I get from people is anger. Curiously enough, the anger is not
about Google or the censors, but it seems more about the West 'trying to push
China around...' or 'trying to keep China down...'

So much so that I've learned to avoid even remotely political conversations
with people here.

Maybe I should start hanging out with more English speakers, but then I
wouldn't be able to learn as much of the language.

Sigh...

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ntoshev
Same old story: a corrupt government invokes patriotic feelings to counter
attacks against itself from abroad (or inside, associate the opposition with
external forces and call them traitors). I'm so sick of this.

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Quarrelsome
Yeah but to be honest it's H.Clinton's fault for providing them with
ammunition. What else did she think she was going to achieve by adding her
weight to the argument? It was completely unnecessary and IMO a diplomacy
fail.

It's the same with Ahmadinejad, most Iranians don't like him but they'll be
"for" him if the Western world is being seen to deny them nuclear power.

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msg
I had an interesting talk with my coworker (fellow engineer) from China. He
had just been back there for a month, so I asked him what people thought about
the whole Google thing.

At first he explained that he thought most people wouldn't care because they
all use Baidu. But when I explained that Google was going to turn off
censorship and filtering or leave, he seemed to get a little flustered. I
think he couldn't imagine either possibility. He said he thought they would
stay, but with less filtering than before.

I felt like the subject was getting touchy so we left it there. But I do find
it plausible that Google's move will shock the average Internet user in China,
especially if it shocks my relatively well-informed friend.

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lhuang
I don't agree with your assertion that China is this manipulative siren and
the googles and microsofts of this world are naive innocent suitors.

For all the talk of corruption, censorship, and privacy, the Chinese
government is surprisingly transparent at the macro level.

Gates and co knew going into China that the government will not budge
regarding issues that even remotely threaten their political legitimacy. This
point extends itself naturaully to the economic arena as well, as it forms the
foundation of CCP's legitimacy for the past few decades.

So all the IP frou-frouing in your post seems off-the-mark to me, not to
mention that blatant copying can be found in really any developing economy.
Before the rise of China, recall that the centers of piracy were in HK,
Taiwan, and Korea. Innovation is derivative and when you can't you copy until
you can.

This is a natural phenomenon of economic growth.

Anyways thanks for trying to be at least more nuanced in your analysis,
instead of casting blame only on one side.

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josh33
Fresh perspective from inside the GFW. The picture painted reminds me of V for
Vendetta. Censors monitoring everything. A government stretched thin to
protect its hold over the people. How could outsiders help from home?

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fnid2
Google leaving China due to "government stuff" is a simple way for them to
ease out of a market where they are losing to Baidu.

according to:
[http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/12/28/googl...](http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/12/28/google-
v-baidu-which-company-will-win-china/)

 _Baidu's market share for search in China was about 77% in the third quarter,
up from 75.6% in the second quarter. Google (GOOG), she says, lost share in
China, dropping to 17% in the third quarter, from about 19% in the second
quarter._

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EricBurnett
I always hate seeing this argument. Using back of the napkin calculations,
that means Google is getting out of China because it's down to 50 million
users there. I guess we should expect them to be leaving Canada soon, since
they only have about 19 million users here. Not to mention that the number of
internet users in China is growing by about 80 million people per year at the
moment according to the world bank, of which Google was presumably getting
their 17% as well.

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ruslan
Anybody can point to figures/estimations showing how much Google makes in
China and in North America per capita ? I strongly believe that doing business
in China is really not worth the associated trouble in Google's case (and in
many others too).

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jimmybot
Given the historical Western narratives on China (and all other Others), I
think we can do a lot better than talking about China as a highly sexualized
female seductress with ulterior motives.

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andreyf
In the meantime, google.cn has been running uncensored for several weeks
now...

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nostrademons
Has it? The only evidence I've seen has been that image search screenshot for
[tianamen square] with all the tanks. But that query was never censored in the
first place, because it's a misspelling that only Westerners make. [tiananmen
square] or the equivalent Chinese query is mostly pictures of the square
itself.

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gertjuh
Very good!

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tybris
In the end it's not the Chinese people who suffer at the hands of their
government, but the West.

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yumraj
This comment to me indicates that while the Chinese people do obviously
suffer, maybe like the poster above they have become so desensitized over the
years, inside the great wall/firewall, that they don't even realize what they
are losing/missing or have already lost.

~~~
ruslan
The less you know the well you sleep. Majority of people disregard the
natinality prefer to sleep and eat well rather than to bother about missed
possibilities and opportunities.

