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Comment by msvan | Hacker News Reader

My point is that Facebook and Google would've been the dominant actors on the Chinese market today, not Weibo, QQ and Baidu, if the CCP hadn't been actively working against the US companies.

The alternative to Windows 8 is, for now, some older version of Windows XP. But as other commenters have pointed out, the CCP is pushing for a Linux-based alternative to Windows. There was an internal CCP document floating around on the Internet last year discussing the Chinese government's worries about not having a domestic OS for desktop and mobile. It'll be a tough transition to make, but compared to forced urbanization it's a walk in the park.

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> My point is that Facebook and Google would've been the dominant actors on the Chinese market today, not Weibo, QQ and Baidu, if the CCP hadn't been actively working against the US companies.

To some degree I agree about this assertion, but you made some factual mistakes:

* The C2C (copy to China) relationship is Twitter -> Weibo, Facebook -> Renren and Google -> Baidu.

* QQ is an IM and the western equivalents MSN, Skype etc. were never banned in China. Also, QQ gained its popularity quite some before the GFW. I believe this is the most legitimate story where a Chinese product wins not due to GFW. Another such story is eBay vs. Taobao.

At least we can also name Dianping and Tudou were established before or at the same time as their western counterparts (Yelp and YouTube).

Baidu is older than Google.

Baidu was founded in 2000. Google in 1998.

However, Robin Li (founder of Baidu) seems to have begun his research on search engines earlier than Google founders. Therefore in some sense Baidu is older than Google, but that's not the most obvious sense :)

This does show that Baidu is not a C2C (Copy to China) product though. I'm happy to learn that.

Protectionism isn't necessarily good in the long term for these Chinese companies. They may not be as efficient as they could be if they were subjected to worldwide competition. If they are more efficient, then they should eventually be able to beat Facebook/Google/Twitter (I for one hope Alibaba will one day kill off eBay).

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