Is that surprising given Yahoo's history with China? If your not familiar, the reporter waited until the closing paragraphs to put this in proper context:
In 2007, Yahoo outraged human rights activists after accusations that the Internet giant had handed over the mail, data on online activity and Internet addresses of suspected dissidents to Chinese officials. Though Yahoo eventually settled the lawsuits brought by lawyers acting on behalf of jailed dissidents.
The suit, advanced by the Washington D.C.-based World Organization for Human Rights USA, maintained that Yahoo had benefited financially by working with Chinese authorities.
Yahoo also no longer maintains its own Internet site in China. In 2005, Yahoo handed over exclusive rights to the "Yahoo China" brand name and folded its Chinese mail, messaging and other operations into the Alibaba Group, in a $1 billion deal that gave Yahoo a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.
Yahoo just rolls over and takes it. The sad thing is, when China is a profitable enough market, and companies who sucked up to the regime are ready to capitalize on their presence there, Yahoo itself will not be around to reap the benefits.
As someone who works at Yahoo I'm going to say I have no guilt over China. If you think China commits human rights violations stop doing business with them yourself. That means not buying anything made in China, including anything made by Apple.
The human rights abuses in China are sad, and upsetting. I'm a member of Amnesty and I care about stopping them. However, western business operating in China have an ability to change the market and increase the standard of living and the freedoms in that country through increased wealth and communication.
This story isn't (or shouldn't) be about Yahoo!'s operations in China it should be about co-operation between companies to prevent cyber-terrorism wherever it's from. I'd like to think next time we as a company are more forthcoming with information to others, so they have more notice of potential threats.
N.B These views are my own and don't necessarily represent Yahoo!'s views, yada, yada
Would it have made a difference if the Chinese had subpoenaed anyone else, such as a Chinese company?
I assuming by your nick, I was going to get lampooned whatever.
The way I see it is simple, if China is that bad then put them under a trade embargo. The entire rest of the world should stop doing business with them. Why make it the responsibility of corporate company to make moral judgement on governments. Yahoo complied with a legal subpoena in China. That was a reasonable thing to do.
You should think about the legal requests that Yahoo, Google and every other company routinely comply with in America in the context of the Guantanamo bay facility and the PATRIOT act. Are those companies doing the world a service?
I know it easy, and apparently trendy, to throw stones at Yahoo over this but frankly that's a very simplistic and naive attitude.
I've met both the Yahoo founders and spent a fair amount of time with one of them. They are nice guys, they have done some awesome things for "human rights" while I've been at Yahoo, like their anti-Prop 8 contributions.
I'm not saying that every decision that a large corporation makes is good for society, fair, or even moral. But, I do think it's ridiculous to make companies moral arbiters when dealing off-shore.
And frankly, part of the point of my original post is everyone's hypocrisy. I would bet a $100 that everyone, without exception that has commented on this thread has at one time or another bought something from China (or elsewhere in the 3rd world) that was made by people treated inhumanely.
So even though you threw the first stone, I hope you think about if you can justify it.
My own opinions, not necessarily Yahoo!s position, etc, etc
That depends whether the instability brought by poking a corrupt regime is good or bad. On the one hand the human rights campaigners could improve democracy and help bring China into the modern world, whilst on the other hand promoting the faults of their corrupt regime could easily result in anarchy and martial law if there was ever an uprising. The major problem here is that an uprising would quickly cause the cost of production to go through the roof in China, forcing virtually every industry to pull out of the country and relocate elsewhere. This major export hit to the Chinese economy could collapse their entire system, and disregarding the international effects, it could easily land China in the situation of North Korea.
Honestly, with the fact that China could so easily result in a massive North Korea, how would that help the standard of living?
China isn't a simple situation and assigning childish ethics to the country will resolve nothing. The simple allowance of unions in China could easily result in another global recession. A college strike here in Ontario is threatening the provinces recovery as it may delay the graduation of all those getting retrained due to the financial crisis. Simply imagine what happened if unionization occurred throughout China and the ramifications for the countries trade.
China is going to require baby steps to bring it into a democratic and free world, anything faster could be an international economic disaster on the scale of the great depression.
Simply imagine what happened if unionization occurred
throughout China and the ramifications for the
countries trade.
Unionization should occur. The Chinese government is using harsh methods to stop that. But the later it happens the worse the results will be for us.
China is going to require baby steps to bring it
into a democratic and free world
We don't need to be delicately careful as if China's a baby. The local human rights activists and upstanding corps like Google are very effective and non-aggressive ways of prodding it into a democratic and free world.
China needs unionization to occur slowly, spreading through key agencies like health care and steel production, rather than a mass unionization of its manufacturing sector. Japan and South Korea achieved unionization of its workforce rather admirably as it happened in key industry first that didn't have a major effect on its economy. A fast switch to unionization could easily cause western manufacturers switch to other south-east Asian countries or even to Africa.
Also, I wasn't advocating treating China like a baby, but I believe it is delicate. The actions of its local human rights activists, and Google (even when it wasn't taking its current stance) were forces for good in the country.
The last thing we need with China is an economic collapse of the country, or a regressionist movement that forces them down a path similar to North Korea. However, I do believe Western governments have to start taking a more hard-line approach when dealing with China. The government can't be given the "Oh it's just China" treatment like parent's saying "Boys will be boys" that it is currently getting. It's almost like the country gets allowed to do what it wants because it's communist, but unlike the USSR was, it isn't militarily aggressive towards the west.
The paragraph above that one is enough context, no? He was asked about pulling out of China.
Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Thursday the software giant
had no plans to pull out of China. Microsoft is chiefly
interested in getting Beijing to crack down on
intellectual property rights, and has no desire to ruffle
relations, analysts said.
The paragraph above is not a quote of Ballmer. There is no actual context provided to say what Ballmer meant by "that," only what the reporter says Ballmer meant. Perhaps that is what the GP meant.
Look people, Google is not above anybody else. Google turned over information to the Indian government to throw some guy in jail for making some remark on a website about the government. Google is just as much against free speech and corroborating with governments against individual rights when it comes to making money. http://binaryday.com/2008/05/18/is-the-arrest-of-rahul-krish...
China has been all out attacking various networks both corporate and government all over the world since at least 2003 so it puzzles me why this is news to anyone. Google knew all about that at the time, but they only publicly lash out now when they're on the the receiving end? Seems rather self serving.
Especially considering Google is not even as popular as the Alibaba Group owned Yahoo in China, let alone the many Chinese search engines.
Correct me if I'm reading this wrong, but doesn't this just mean that Yahoo knew about the attacks before Google told them? Google could have been aware of the attacks well before they told Yahoo about it, and there's no indication (given the information in the body of the article) that Yahoo knew first (likewise, the inverse is true).
You don't read the news or blogs? There's not a single day without an article questioning Google evilness when it comes to our data. I never see any about Yahoo.
Yes, in the press. My question was more about people ("real people you meet" versus "people you read about"), but I agree -- the press has played with the "don't be evil" at leisure, and rightly so (imho).
Analysts say many foreign multinationals in fact may occasionally bend over backwards to appease Beijing, coveting the vast potential market in what will soon be the world's second-largest economy.
Since Google reported the attacks, only Adobe Systems Inc, Juniper Networks Inc and Rackspace Hosting Inc have acknowledged experiencing similar incidents. But the majority of victims have remained silent.
Confession time: I also knew of concerted Chinese attacks "before Google" and kept mum. For the past few years, day after day, countless phishing and spam kept arriving in my inbox with .cn URLs but I kept it to myself.
In 2007, Yahoo outraged human rights activists after accusations that the Internet giant had handed over the mail, data on online activity and Internet addresses of suspected dissidents to Chinese officials. Though Yahoo eventually settled the lawsuits brought by lawyers acting on behalf of jailed dissidents.
The suit, advanced by the Washington D.C.-based World Organization for Human Rights USA, maintained that Yahoo had benefited financially by working with Chinese authorities.
Yahoo also no longer maintains its own Internet site in China. In 2005, Yahoo handed over exclusive rights to the "Yahoo China" brand name and folded its Chinese mail, messaging and other operations into the Alibaba Group, in a $1 billion deal that gave Yahoo a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.