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Comment by waynecochran | Hacker News Reader

I am guessing that Baidu must have the proper censorship and control mechanisms built in. I bet there is a really interesting story underneath this.

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The Chinese government wanted its backdoors and censorship, but the US companies didn't want to look like they would enable that in China while promoting privacy and security in the US.

So the Chinese government offered them a "compromise" - let our Chinese companies be the "front" for your products, in which we can include all the backdoors and censorship we want, while you get to tell everyone else how much you care about your users' privacy.

When anyone asks why the Chinese version of Windows 10 or Skype or Cisco routers or Cloudflare services come built-in with backdoors and censorship, just say "it's not us, you see, it's our Chinese partners doing all of that! We care deeply about our users' privacy and security."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/24/us-cisco-systems-c...

While at the same time openly adding backdoors and censorship for the US government.

Serious question - are Apple doing this too? They talk what seems to be a serious anti spying thing in the US but then they talk up massive profits in China and availability on state owned China Mobile, I've been wondering how they're justifying that.

> are Apple doing this too?

Surprisingly, they didn't seem to be last time I checked (2013). There were many apps available in the CN app store which you'd think the govt would remove, especially around comms and reading material.

If it hits the govt radar they will definitely act, which could have massive technology and public perception implications for Apple.

I don't doubt for a second there was a closed-door deal with the state. But we also shouldn't dismiss the fact that Baidu is still the leading search engine in mainland China so for Microsoft it makes total sense to switch the default engine to Baidu. Windows 10 is actually pretty cool (speaking as someone who have abandoned Windows for several years). If the integration experience works out I actually think the switch is going to help (I am also looking forward to seeing what the AI team at Baidu are doing). The biggest challenge today is still making use of all the data, bring them to user in the most comfortable and usable way possible. Lots of fancy words, but I guess I can summarize that down to "shadow me, guess what I want before I ask, and do the things I want as I ask."

Surely censorship, privacy are big issues but I just want to voice my opinion on both ends.

But we also shouldn't dismiss the fact that Baidu is still the leading search engine in mainland China so for Microsoft it makes total sense to switch the default engine to Baidu.

Well ... Google remains by far the leading search engine in the U.S.

Quite obviously they don't plan to switch the default from Bing to Google for us any time soon.

The article is about China, so the same business (and political) strategy does not apply in the U.S.

Simply put, maybe oversimplified, but with the political support and native integration:

* both Google and Bing are born in the U.S.

* Google and Bing cannot compete with Baidu in China

* Google and Bing cannot compete with Yandex in Russia

I wouldn't be surprise to see Yandex becoming the default in the future.

It's probably worth noting:

* Google is blocked in China

* Google and Bing are not blocked in Russia

While we're at it

* Facebook is blocked in China

* Facebook is not blocked in Russia

* VK (Facebook alternative) is more than twice as popular as Facebook in Russia

Did you mean google.com or google.com.cn?

Thanks for the clarification. I was going by this wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_C...

So google.com, which does detract from my point.

It's okay. I think your points are still very beneficial to have. IMO native companies always have advantage as they usually have better understanding about the culture, user preference, and government. Portal is a big thing in the Eastern Asian countries like China and Japan so for a long time Yahoo and MSN search used to be leading the game until, of course, more Internet search engines come online.

Both google.com and google.com.cn are blocked, along with all other country specific Google domains.

Also, the largest search provider in Japan is Yahoo! Japan (2nd largest is Google, which has been slowly gaining).

Coincidentally, Yahoo! Inc does not own Yahoo! Japan. They are only a minor shareholder. Softbank is the largest shareholder of Yahoo! Japan.

Yahoo! Japan is also extremely different from Yahoo! that we know. In Japan, it's a social network, auction house, storefront, message board, news service and search provider all rolled into one. And they started doing this years before anyone else (becoming a one stop shop). The site may look dated today, but it was years ahead of its time when it started doing all those things. It's one of the reasons why they've been so hard to unseat. They got in early, sprawled out and cemented their place in Japanese web culture.

Because Google won't pay Microsoft for it, won't partner with Microsoft, etc. Baidu is not a total competitor to Microsoft the way Google is.

>Because Google won't pay Microsoft for it, won't partner with Microsoft, etc.

Where do you get that impression? They pay Mozilla, Apple, and several other companies royalties for referrals to their search engine.

Mozilla and Apple don't make Internet search engine (although some speculates Apple is making a rivalry search engine). They integrate with the Internet search engines out there.

MS didn't make search engine, either. They decided to make one anyway.

I am not following. You said they didn't make one, but they made one anyway? So they made one or not?

MS made their search engine in 1999, only two years after Google.

"But we also shouldn't dismiss the fact that Google is still the leading search engine in the US so for Microsoft it makes total sense to switch the default engine to Google."

It would make total sense if Microsoft were no longer interested in competing with Google in the US.

Microsoft would never do that willingly. would they offer Baidu as an option? Sure, but they wouldn't make it the default. That would be a silly "strategy". This was forced upon them. No doubt they get some "benefits" from this, too, though, but nothing that can outweigh Bing not being the default in China.

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