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Comment by siculars | Hacker News Reader

I am so proud of Google right now. It's hard to contain. It is high time somoene stood up to China and let them know enough is enough. I sincerely hope other corporations follow suit.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I am sure there is more to the story than is being let on now. I could only imagine the level of corporate espionage that is in play between China and Google. Good for Google calling them on it and making a broad public move.

As far as I'm concerned, Google has just turned me into a lifelong user.

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And it started. Major news sites in China start to filter out this news which has been heavily reported several hours ago. I expected all Google service will be blocked by the end of today.

Edit: maybe not that soon. A second thought, current news block may be interpreted as a "saving face" for Google. China high officials may have that kind of thought and think it is for Google's own benefits so that they can still discuss with Chinese gov. Otherwise if it is spread, there is no room for discussion.

I'm not sure they can just block all Google services all of a sudden. What about mail. What about docs. What about turning off your Google Adwords account.

I think (judging by downvotes) that I am being misunderstood.

My thinking was along these lines: Mr Small Chinese Exporter wakes up tomorrow unable to access his Google Adwords account which is how he connects to foreign importers. He's out of widgets and wants to stop advertising them. He can't even suspend the campaign and they keep charging his credit card. That's bad business. I'm not sure China would want to do that suddenly even if they do plan to eventually block all of Google's stuff.

I took "al' Google service" to mean all the different Google products.

What happens to "Mr Small Chinese Exporter" is never a concern for such a government like the Chinese one ...

I disagree.

Historically, China would do that. Probably it'll depend on how many influential people actually use google docs and such. I suspect not enough.

Perhaps this was Google's strategy from the beginning. Introduce useful services into the Chinese market while accepting government restrictions, then when enough Chinese have become dependent on these services, try to negotiate the restrictions from a position of strength, knowing that China would not want to be responsible for leaving Google's Chinese customers without service.

The Atlantic's James Fallows ran a piece last year about how the Great Firewall works. Long read, but quite interesting.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/chinese-firewall

Why on earth is this comment being downmodded? Netscan makes a completely valid point. What China should, in my opinion, do is slowly phase google out; throttle traffic to google's servers and then release some news articles with false statements from google that they can't support the traffic.

Getting the people of China to willfully abandon Google would be good in the eyes of the Chinese government.

Be careful there, your commitment is no different from the conviction of a nationalist approving one's government's actions no matter what is done.

You being critical of Google is the only thing guaranteed to keep them in check.

The correct time to criticize organizations to keep them in check is when they have done something worthy of criticism. On the other hand, when they have done things worthy of praise, celebrating them is at worst a no op.

Mainly talking about his "lifelong user" statement.

Companies are fluid entities, constantly morphing and changing. Praising the action is where the focus should be, not the company.

> I could only imagine the level of corporate espionage that is in play between China and Google.

I'm not sure these types of interactions can still be described as corporate espionage. The fact that one of these parties is a sovereign nation creates wrinkle to this whole thing. (From what I understand China doesn't directly link themselves too closely with this but no one really thinks this isn't covert stuff being directed by their government.)

It's further muddled because China is a sovereign nation with significant corporate holdings.

Governments are basically corporations with varying degrees of public ownership that have monopolies on societal goods. I would consider this corporate espionage.

The US also engages in corporate espionage through the NSA in the interest of its defense contractors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency#ECHELO... (last paragraph)

Agreed, but Occam's Razor seems too tempting not to consider in this situation. What's more likely, that Google decided overnight to get wise to the 'evil-being' that they might have been underwriting in China for the last 5 years, or that the business circumstances shifted such that an exit from the Chinese search market made more sense for the company, and a story was thus spun?

> I am so proud of Google right now.

I am too, but I think we should remember that China's citizens were and still are being censored, killed, and tortured on a daily basis. Google was fine doing business with them and even assisting in their censorship. Only until Google found itself on the receiving end of China's baton did it finally decide to change their relationship.

They deserve kudos and a pat on the back for realizing that it's not good to bow down and comply with a government that tortures and locks up its citizens for speaking their minds, but they don't deserve any sort of hero worship.

> Only until Google found itself on the receiving end of China's baton did it finally decide to change their relationship.

Maybe Google is lying to us, but what they were saying is originally it was 'well, even if censored, we can still be a positive factor'. Now they are saying, 'our presence is being abused by the gov't. We are now a negative factor'.

I'm sure they aren't giddy about getting hacked, but if not getting hacked was their primary goal, I doubt complete withdraw from China would be move #1

I don't remember an instance of Google responding to the Chinese government request of information.

They did follow the government guideline and censored their results but that's a very minor problem compared to the good Google did by just giving access to better english based information than Baidu for example.

All of this is not question of black and white and I respect Google a lot more than Yahoo based on the way they behave (Yahoo did help directly to the arrest of a political activist in China see: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/technology/19yahoo.html)

I love that they made this announcement via a press release on their blog and not an 'exclusive interview' with a specific news outlet.

I agree with all of what you've said. The skeptic in me thinks that Google is using this attack as an excuse to offset the PR disaster when Schmidt said the if you have something to hide maybe you shouldn't be doing it speech.

Google is using this attack as an excuse to offset the PR disaster when Schmidt said the if you have something to hide maybe you shouldn't be doing it speech.

That's just insane... do you really think the two are comprable? Google would lose more customers by withdrawing from China than people who know, much less care in the least, about that quote...

That's just insane... do you really think the two are comprable?

1. Google is not withdrawing from China. They are merely deciding not to implement additional censoring measures to curry additional favor with the government.

2. They have been losing market share to an inferior but government approved search engine Baidu.

Why do you think Google China's Kai-fu Lee left after a few years in his highest position to make a relatively small startup when his track record shows he prefers large corporations like Apple, SGI, and Microsoft? Google knows they are losing ground and he was probably abandoning the sinking ship.

Another year of lost market share to government supported Baidu and the recent espionage was the last straw for Google to know that their current methods weren't working.

3. Why are you comparing them then? It's not like Google decided to make this happen so they could publicly denounce the Chinese government.

Considering their past practices with China, I would have expected them to keep silent on the matter. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the Schmidt incident influenced the scale of their reaction.

If you think Schmidt's quote did not make a big impact , that's your opinion, not fact.

Please read the article to the end: "We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.". So no, they aren't willing to censor more. Wether they have more market share is an entirely different matter. It's about the decision to pull out of China. This could be the right or the wrong decision, only the future knows, but the decision has a big symbolic significance, that's what everyone is astonished about.

I did read the article to the end, and I find no fault with what I said.

They haven't decided to pull out completely from China yet. They simply said they might, and their main focus was to stop censoring as much as they can "within the law".

I am really surprised that you have been voted so highly as though you and many other readers here mistakenly interpreted this as an absolute sign that Google is going to withdraw from China.

Is this perhaps a misinterpretation of "within the law"?

"[...] over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all."

They talk of filtering as an all-or-nothing concept. They want to operate unfiltered search (not semi-filtered, or filtered to the extent of the law). "Within the law" refers to the fact that they want to accomplish unfiltered search in a manner that is legal and their statement is rather clear that failing that they will be shutting down.

You're right, though, that this being an ultimatum isn't stated in clear (binding) legalese—quintessentially their wording of "not willing to continue" instead of "will not continue". This is almost certainly intentional.

However, it is a press release that declares intent, generates expectations and has a common and obvious interpretation as a take-it-or-leave-it deal. From a public relations standpoint, Google would not benefit from doing something completely different.

Your interpretation is incorrect. Google have quite clearly stated that they are no longer willing to accept any censorship of their search results on Google.cn and that they are prepared to shut down their operations in China if it's not possible to legally run Google.cn without filters. As it seems unlikely that the Chinese government will permit Google to operate such an unfiltered search engine, Google is effectively announcing its exit from the Chinese market.

My interpretation is entirely correct. As of now, Google has not yet voluntarily withdrawn google.cn from the internet.

Just because you think it is sure sign that Google will withdraw does not mean that they will. So far this is nothing more than an empty threat.

I think you are probably partially correct in the sense that a company as large as Google is not comprised of one single personality. The decision making voices in Google could well run the spectrum from those advocating a moral line in the sand all the way to those bottom liners that were convinced that an action like this could well have enough PR upside to offset any potential losses in the Chinese market.

In regards to Kai-Fu Lee: his track record might be one of large corporations but now he spots an opportunity to capitalize on it and start something that will net him much more than working for a big corp ever could.

In China, business is like no other place. It is fully about connections and relationships and Lee is a unique individual -- he has connections from his days at all the major corps (Microsoft, Google) and finally he is using them for his benefit. If it takes off, he could be incredibly rich -- much more than the $10 million Google was (rumored) paying him. If not, he can always go back to any big corp: they will be falling all over themselves to have him.

Point being: you cannot correlate Lee's departure with a their projected performance.

Except that's not what he said, so...

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