The Chinese Google Timeout
With the recent news of Google re-evaluating it’s presence in China, Jono Bacon and Stuart ‘Aq’ Langridge dive into the issue and explore whether Google has unwittingly become a pawn in a global political game.
What do you think? Is Google making a brave or dangerous move with it’s decision? This shot is merely the start of the conversation…share your thoughts below and let’s get to the heart of the issue together…
49 Comments to “The Chinese Google Timeout”
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ok sorry for that but for some reason I had to do it…
First off you guys didn’t interpret the news report right. What google said is that they refuse to inforce the censorship on google.cn.. I heard somewhere they were considering pulling out but I just had a look at a quote from their statement and it seems to me they will only do that if forced by the government.
So in my opinion they made a really good move. Question is what will happen next. I hope more companies will follow their example but I have a feeling they wont.
Hm, I’m not sure I agree with you there. Yes, technically what they’ve stated is that they’ll only pull out if forced to. But “forcing” in this context means “the government do what we expect them to do”.
Analogise this to your daily life and the complexities fall away. You and I are sitting in a pub. Every time you try to speak I slap you on the back of the head, and I say: this is what I do in conversations. At some point, you get sick of not being able to participate, and you get sick of your head hurting, so you move to another table. I then say: you’re forcing me to not take part in the conversation, and I leave the pub.
Now, technically, you’ve “forced” me out. But it’s obvious that I’m being a dick here.
Google’s position seems to be that “the Chinese government requiring us to continue censoring search results is against our basic code of ethics, and if they won’t relax that requirement, they’re forcing us out of the Chinese market”. Now, I completely agree with that sentiment, and it’s a brave thing to say, but claiming that Google will only leave if they’re “forced” out is disingenuous.
Well just as disingenuous as saying google is pulling out… most media sources seem to be a bit one sided on the story in my opinion. Instead of saying “google is putting their foot down”, witch they are, the media has drawn the conclusion google will pull out, way before anything really happened.
Oh and btw remember how everyone smacked the search engines for complying with censorship ? I don’t see a coherent reaction now when they went back on that decision.
I don’t think the Chinese government have an easy choice right now. I mean I’m sure they wont run crying but still… the whole world is looking and the longer this story is in the news the worst it is for their image.
Plus your analogy isn’t really what is happening here. They’re not moving to another table. They’re just paring the slap. I mean it’s not like they shut down the site or anything.
They haven’t shut it down yet, true, because they haven’t been “forced” to leave China. The interesting question is whether the threat of Google leaving China entirely will have any influence over the Chinese government’s decisions, or whether the government don’t care.
I’m not sure what interest the Chinese Govt has in Google remaining in China. If the news reports are to be believed, anyone who isn’t censoring content is evil in the eyes of the Chinese Govt. However I can see that there is a small advantage in the Chinese Govt knowing where it’s ‘enemies’ e-mail accounts are, and how they can hack into them
PS: if you go to google.cn right now and search “freedom for tibet” you get some regular results (www.freetibet.org is the first in my list).. on the other hand if you go to yahoo.cn and search the same thing you clearly get censored results.
blimey, according to an Ars Technica article (http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/01/researchers-identify-command-servers-behind-google-attack.ars), “if [a Verisign iDefense report]’s findings are correct, it suggests that the government of China has been engaged for months in a massive campaign of industrial espionage against US companies.”
(I should note that this is not exactly a surprise, but it’s rare to see confirmation of this sort of thing outside the intelligence community.)
I’ve seen similar reports on other sites
This significantly heats up the game and the discussion. If companies such as Google are political pawns, I am curious to see how the US government is interpreting this move.
It’s an interesting point that Google is only the 2nd most popular search engine in China, and only hold 30-something% of the market. I’m sure that Google mamnagement were expecting to hold a much higher market share, andas such be able to ‘monetize’ themselves better. I wonder if Google have been appraising their business in China, and this has proved to be a ‘good excuse’ to pull out of what they now find is a difficult market
I doubt it’s an excuse. I mean 30% is still a hefty slice that might go to MSFT or Yahoo if they pull out. But it might well be a publicity stunt. I mean if they don’t make enough profit from that market they might stand to gain something this way.
If the Chinese don’t budge Google gets some good publicity and if they’re allowed to continue without censorship then they get an advantage.
Either way I have a feeling that current government restrictions are hurting them somehow. I don’t see why anybody would risk giving up one third of a market with such a huge potential. I mean big companies don’t just emo rage quit because they’re in second place
…
Emo rage quit is now my new fave term.
One possibility is that the move to China hurts Google’s global reputation. I am sure that inside Google they get endless amounts of grief about their decision to censor results in China, primarily because some of Google’s biggest critics are (a) people who are passionate about freedom and (b) Google have such a public commitment to not being evil.
true that..
I think that this shows that Google DO have a sense of social responsibility, since they’re now saying “We’re going to give the Chinese everything, or nothing at all.”
If they didn’t have that sense of responsibility, they’d just pull out, with no suggestion of staying but removing censorship.
I don’t think that their pulling out will have any bigger effect on the chinese people than them not being their a few years ago did. Right now, they’ve got censored search engines. If they pull out, they’ll have censored search engines. I think the critical point is going to be the reaction from the Chinese government to them refusing to censor results, and the knock-on effect among the Chinese people.
Although I understood Google’s argument for trading in China in the first place, I think this decision is ultimately the only policy that can sit comfortably with their informal “Do no evil” slogan (based on what is perceived as “evil” in the western world).
The sad part about all this is that if Google does have to pull out of China, a huge number of Chinese citizens will never hear about Google’s stated reason for leaving and they will be left with Chinese-run search engines which may be even more heavily censored.
Exactly the point we were making about sanctions: does Google have a responsibility to stay available in China even if they don’t want to, for the sake of those Chinese citizens?
I’m failing to see what real service Google is providing to the Chinese citizenry that won’t be provided if they leave. In fact, sticking around right now seems to be giving the Chinese government an opportunity to more easily attack human rights organisations that use Google’s services.
Well no company has stood up to their government till now. And that’s probably because none of them had any reason to do so.
I think this is a very good test. We will find out pretty soon exactly how strong the Chinese feel about this issue. Or Google might strike a deal, just to save face with the public, and go on with business as usual. It’s not the first time some big executive said big things just as intimidation.
There is a theory that stipulates that large corporations now wield the power that national governments once held (in the same way that Nation States supplanted religions as the ultimate governing power). I wonder if this is one of the first major tests of whether that theory has become reality? Is it conceivable that Google believes it can dictate to the worlds most powerful government? We live in interesting times.
I don’t know about it being concievable that a company can grow to be so powerful that it can dictate terms to the most powerful government, but is it right that it can do so? Obviously growth is a measure of success, but the resultant power must be managed in some way. I could be a smplistic arguement, but what would happen if the most powerful company told it’s Government that it wasn’t paying taxes that year? If that company did hold that amount of power, what would the Government do? Sanction the company? fine the company? Could the company up sticks and trade somewhere else? /GrassyKnoll
The government, whichever government you’re talking about, has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. By which I mean, if Google refuse to pay their taxes then the gummint can kick down the doors, send in men with guns, and put Eric Schmidt in jail. Google can’t, legitimately, do that back. (They could do it illegitimately, but then what you’re talking about is civil war. My respect for Chris diBona is boundless, but I think if he got into a barney with General Petraeus he’d lose. On the other hand, Petraeus would be crap at managing a worldwide community. Each to their own.)
Large companies today are much less powerful relative to governments than they were several hundred years ago. At one time the East India Company was the government of much of India, and the Hudson’s Bay Company was the government of much of Canada. They made their own laws and they had the armed power to enforce them.
Those companies were operated on the basis of making returns for their shareholders and they didn’t worry too much about who got in their way while doing it. That isn’t just political hyperbole, it was a physical fact.
At present large companies operating in areas like oil, mining, defence industry, transportation, nuclear power, and communications do operate hand in glove with their home governments. They do often act as an instrument of government policy, and their home governments do make sure that the shareholders don’t suffer financially for it. That is exactly how their counterparts worked in the 19th century colonial era as well, so this isn’t a new phenomenon.
If the content is filtered in the first place, the issue of harm for Chinese citizens by the loss of Google is probably lessened. The benefit of Google and their kind is quick access to information out there on the web, censoring actually stops that already.
I suppose there is still a lot of valuable information which Google helps to find, still not censored by the government which would still be enormously beneficial for Chinese citizens.
However, the pro of being able to search for a great place to buy some cheap trainers compared to getting information about how you can change a system and help make your country move forward kind of puts some perspective on what free access to information really wants to be about.
Of course, Google also won’t want Baidu stealing their source code (as was the rumour).
Interesting thing about sanctions: The western world is SO dependent on Chinese products. There is a very clear reason that China has never been trade sanctioned: Clothes prices would go seriously up, electronics prices would would go seriously up, the price of whichever product that happens to be made by sweatshop workers would go up hugely. Which brings us to the next question: Would that be okay?
i think there is a lot more than prices of consumer goods implicated if we’re discussing the idea of trade sanctions on china. the chinese government holds hundreds of billions of dollars of US debt, which is part of what’s preserving the still-fragile stabilization of the world economy after the 2008 meltdown. i don’t think there’s much chance right now of the US (or any other Western country) jeopardizing that for the sake of making a point about censorship.
with respect to google itself (rather than a US government response triggered by the attack on google), it seems like the chinese government also holds the upper hand here. if google pulls out, there is still a viable alternative in baidu, and the government already controls that. the chinese government would take a PR hit if google departs, but they would retain (actually enhance) control over information, which seems to be their primary concern.
so to respond to the original question, i think google’s stance is both brave and dangerous, and to some extent they are a pawn in a broader political game. i respect their decision to stand behind their stated principles, but as big and powerful as google is, i think the chinese government and economy is bigger, and the chinese know it.
I think that part of the reason behind Google making noises about pulling out of China is because they have become so much of a pawn in the cold war between the US and China. Much of Google’s value lies in the trust between Google and its users. Google wants to hold your data. If their users are afraid that China (or anyone else) is hacking their e-mail accounts, then much of Google’s business plan goes right down the drain.
Something that you missed out on though is the extent to which the US government has been doing exactly this sort of monitoring of people for years. They may not be censoring your e-mail, but if the US government wants to know what is in your Gmail account, they have direct access to it with no questions asked and no hacking required.
They’re not alone in this either nor is it very new. When Margaret Thatcher wanted to know which of her cabinet ministers were plotting against her she just asked the Canadian government to tap their phones and send her the transcripts. It was illegal for the UK’s own security services to do it themselves that (at that time), but it wasn’t illegal for them to ask a friend to do it for them. That’s the whole point behind Echelon. It lets the participating countries get around their own laws.
To tell you the truth, listening to a pair of Englishmen worrying about liberty and censorship is a bit ironic. I don’t think you realise just how far the UK has gone down that road themselves, with a lot of other countries following close behind. I think that over time that China and the West will become more alike, but I don’t think that it’s China that is going to change the most. Does 42 days ring any alarm bells?
As for the Chinese government’s view of Google pulling out of China, I suspect they wouldn’t shed too many tears, other than for the temporary loss of face. Google dominates the global search and advertising market, but they are only number two in China. The Chinese government probably wouldn’t mind at all if a Chinese company (Baidu) was protected from competition. The Chinese economy is very large (soon to be the second largest) and Internet companies like Baidu can make a very nice business there without having to rely on foreigners.
I realise precisely how far down that road the UK has gone, and it worries me a lot. This is why I’m a member of the Open Rights Group in the UK; this is why we always invited them to talk at LugRadio Live; this is why I fought the introduction of Phorm. The UK’s not China, but some parts of the government would certainly be happy for it to be so.
Its probably true that the Chinese economy is the big player here – the Chinese are nutotrious for enforcing their own competing standards (instead of the accepted international standards) for everything from DVDs and SMS to, well, internet search. Driving out global players that can hurt that hegemony is part of the process.
Googles most valueable thing is information and correctly indexed such. The more information they got and that their users produce the bigger and mightier google will be. On the other hand all that information leads to privacy and integrity concerns. Keeping non public info private is also important to google without that companies and indivuduals will be reluctant to put more information on the internet.
Industrial espionage is not anything new and china is one of the biggest in this regard as well as the usa whatever you might think. China is as well one of the largest market for pirated goods and services.
The chinese government does not need google at all. How much google needs china only time will tell. At the moment only 1 percent of googles earnings come from china and most are from chinese companies dealing with export of goods and services with the north america and europe. If google thought that 1 percent of its earnings would be a too big of a sacrifise I don’t think they would have made such a statement even though they haven’t promised anything. Amnesty is shouting huraa before anything has even happend. I think googles plan is to see what happens and will try to get back in as soon as possible. This will the stockholders see to happens. Any country that leav es china will suffer this is unavoidable since the chinese market is so big. I dont see any other company following google. The chinese gov ernment is encuraging the domestic companies and favouring them whenever deals are made or services invoiced. This might be a case for WTO where there illegal methods might be up for debate or vote. Only then can western comapnies get better judicial and espionage protection from the komunistic regim in the country.
People keep saying that Google doesn’t care much about their profits in China, but I do believe that Google cares an awful lot about their potential profits there. The country is growing like crazy and more and more people get internet access – so leaving that market now is something a company only does in the worst circumstances.
I don’t believe at all that Google will pull out of China – they just try to get some positive publicity in a time everyone complains about their immense data accumulation that makes “1984″ look like a utopian dream of a better world (at least in some commentaries). In all of these articles the censorship in China gets mentioned prominently.
They will settle for some compromise at some point, but the Chinese government won’t allow uncensored searches and Google won’t leave China either.
Besides that (and I so much hate to say that), Steve Ballmer is right – nobody would profit if the Western companies leave China. All you would get is a country that is even more locked up from the outside.
Slow steps are the only way to go – and the will to change has to come from inside. The Americans are just learning 2 painful lessons in Afghanistan and Iraq that Coca Cola and Hollywood (and violence) are not enough to convince a population to forget everything they have had in the past and accept Western Democracy as their saviour.
BTW: Baidu also blocks with the search terms “Falun Gong” and “Taiwan”
The real affect of this will be the affect on US policy and politics:
Google has provided high visibility to the activities of Chinese cyber spying. It has become front page news (almost) and most people in the Western world have now been made aware of it. This might various affects:
1) A change in the way US funds and executes IT security 2) Changes in US internet related legislation (e.g. increased surveillance of internet traffic) 3) Pressure being applied to US companies doing business in China to consider other issues besides just profit
I don’t think we can be so high and mighty about countries that filter the Internet. All countries do it it only the amount and subject matter involved that is different. Here in the UK all ISP’s use the Internet Watch Foundation block list. In Saudi Arabia the government filters the external Internet of images of women not fully clothed. Australia is introducing default filtering of the Internet so parents don’t need to set up their own filters.
We in our culture may disagree with these choices, but we should recognise that different cultures feel threatened by information on the internet. There is general agreement in the UK that removing child pornography from the sites you can see is a good thing. We should not simply judge other cultures for their choices of information that they feel threatens their society and making attempts to protect their citizens form this material.
I have worked in Saudi and they have built a society that works for the majority. There is no democracy, the King rules, and that is that. But there are other measures of a healthy society. How about maintaining the infrastructure, or treating the sick, on these aspects life for the poor (Saudi nationals only) is pretty good. This is maintained on the oil revenue but that doesn’t we in the west should condemn them for their choices in forming their society.
I do think we can comment on the processes that these block lists are created and maintained. In the west and in Saudi there is a fairly broad consensus of the value of the blocking that is imposed. Though neither would accept the others choice. Do the Chinese people agree with the level of blocking that is imposed on them? I don’t think this is an easy question to answer from our position in the west. But probably if it was put to a general vote I would thing that they would not agree with their governments decision. But then again that isn’t the way that their political system works.
So what we are really saying when we say we don’t agree with the level of censorship is that we disagree with the Chinese political system.
We have no way of knowing what’s on the Internet Watch Foundation’s “block list”, it’s not publicly available, it could be nearly as bad as the Chinese “great wall of china”, and like China, they don’t publish the list of prohibited items…
Australia’s one of the most backward of the “westernised countries”, they’ve been trying for compulsory internet blocking for ISP customers since 1999…
“I have worked in Saudi and they have built a society that works for the majority.” well, only if you think that a sex ratio of 1.05 means that women are in the minority…
Blocking is basically an admission that education has failed, backwards countries like Saudi Arabia and China hopefully block more than countries like the UK, but the nature of organisations like the IWF means that we really don’t know (despite being funded by the UK Government, and being their approved “blocking” supplier, they’re apparently immune to FOI requests by virtue of being a charity).
I’m not totally against censorship, but I think that it’s essential that those being censored explicitly know what’s being censored and what’s not…
[...] The recent news of Google threatening to pull out of china because of the censorship that they are forced to implement is [...]
Stuart (16 Jan 10:50 pm) Wrote:
“We in our culture may disagree with these choices, but we should recognise that different cultures feel threatened by information on the internet”…etc
“We should not simply judge other cultures for their choices of information that they feel threatens their society and making attempts to protect their citizens form this material”…etc
Bullcrap. We can and we should. I have heard comments like this from people (on and off-line) far too often. Truly Disgusting. “We should not judge them, they are a different culture! Maybe censorship is good for them, who are we to judge their culture? Get off your high-horse” People are actually saying this ridiculously patronising bollocks.
Ah google isnt big in China anyway, Baidu is a lot bigger. To be honest China is the one country that loves putting walls around itself. I think blocking of child pornography and criminal sites is just fine. The problem is that the web has always been a open platform and some restrictions (child pornography and criminal sites) are ok but China is going way too far. It harks back to the old days in Eastern Europe and Russia.
I think Google are a company so they are more powerful than most countries because they can influence people on the ground and that has so much sway.
Ahem. Banning “criminal sites” is OK? Does that apply to The Pirate Bay? Rapidshare? Who defines “criminal”, here? According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Africa the age of consent in Angola is 12. So a site displaying pornography with 13 year old girls wouldn’t be “child pornography” if it was hosted in Angola?
It’s difficult to argue that the Chinese government shouldn’t be allowed to ban stuff that they disagree with but that other countries should.
That is very true who defines what is criminal, so ill suggest a little list. How to make bombs and drugs, selling drugs..etc. Although in some countries its legal id say the western world would have fairly standard laws. Anti terrorism, drugs and Child porn. Other than those three its up in the air. I dont like blocking freedom of speech but blocking of things that threaten me I wouldnt want readily available.
China isn’t in the “western world”! Why should they care about what are standard laws there?
Several have said that China does not need Google, I don’t think that is true, Google a western company, and a symbol of free and open information by Google accepting censorship it gives the Chinese government legitimacy in enforcing censorship in general. If Google leaves China, it embareses the Chinese government which is trying desperately to change how it is viewed. China wants to be seen as a big player in the world. This hurts Chinas geopolitical interests.
Secondly Google stock prices were hardly dented by the news and quickly bounced back. So at least initial impressions from share holders is strong.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the US State Department was consulted before making their move public, Of course Google is big enough to collaborate with the US Gov’t most people probably think Google IS the internet. I don’t think this makes Google a pawn though. The US government is just as useful to industry as industry is to government.
I would really be surprised if Google is Hillary Clinton’s pawn as the Shot suggested.
Here is the low down on the attacks: http://www.krebsonsecurity.com/2010/01/mcafee-ie-0day-fueled-attacks-on-google-adobe/
I don’t think Google would have much to worry about from their shareholders here. Their prospectus explicitly stated they will sacrifice short term results in favour of long term gains, and this could easily fit into that scenario.
Pulling out of China might lose some market share short term, but what is the long term damage of fear that the Chinese government having unrestricted access to their network?
Check this out: http://feeds.tvo.org/~r/tvo/searchengine/~3/vdHvbGvAOYM/800813_48k.mp3
I don’t know if this has been mentioned yet, but on this week’s “This Week In Google” episode (#25) Leo had Siva Vaidhyanathan on from Google talking about the whole China deal brought up some very interesting points about why Google actually did what they did. Jeff Jarvis is kind of douchey during the podcast as he usually is, but if you can bear him the rest of the show is good. http://twit.tv/twig25