Comment by Frazzydee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Frazzydee | Hacker News Reader

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> China’s biggest cellular communications company, China Mobile, was expected to cancel a deal that had placed Google’s search engine on its mobile Internet home page

> China’s second-largest mobile company, China Unicom, was said by analysts and others to have delayed or killed the imminent introduction of a cellphone based on Google’s Android platform.

> One major Internet portal, Tom.com, already had ceased using Google to power its search engine.

Now, I'm not sure of the business arrangements made, but it sounds to me that Chinese companies are repudiating contracts because of pressure by the Chinese government.

If true, this looks really bad on China for foreign investment. The government can, on a whim, cancel your contracts with Chinese companies, and steer public opinion using news agencies. Not to mention risk of your IP getting appropriated. That's not the kind of environment foreign companies like to work in.

The Chinese government is, I think, looking very childish right now.

That China can take your business assets, cancel any agreement, or even put your employees in jail, is part of the risk assumed by any company that chooses to do business there. This incident is not going to change the way business is done in China. Foreign companies just see the billions of potential customers, and will bend over backwards (and risk losing investment) to do whatever they need to get access to that potential (and human rights be damned). Even Google is not wanting to pull all of it's business out of China, so they can't really be given too much credit for what they did with just the search engine.

Isn't this how business is done in most countries? The countries have laws and if the businesses want to enter the market, they have to follow the laws of the country?

It seems like this debate is mostly irrational and hypocritical support of Google and a nationalistic anti-China sentiment.

The U.S. does exactly the same things China is doing now. They prop up GM and not honda or toyota. They bail out U.S. banks, but not HSBC. They retroactively change the laws to enable AT&T et al to violate the constitution.

Why the hypocrisy?

Why the false equivalence?

A bit like Apple with the app store, is it not?

Yes, I think so. This behaviour and uncertainty increases the cost of business when dealing with Apple's platforms. Similarly, China's practices increases the cost of doing business in the country. Both have leverage due to size of the market economy (they can get away with more than a smaller firm/country would)

This does little to discourage the Nokia's of the world, but it certainly might be a deciding factor for smaller firms.

Deals are of course going to be canceled voluntarily. If you're a mobile company why would you ship your products with a search engine that's dropping its service in your country? Not to mention the bad publicity the Google brand is now incurring in China. It's the same reason why endorsements/sponsorships/contracts are dropped when people like Tiger Woods and Kate Moss screw up. It's bad image.

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