Google.cn
I am sure you have seen about Google’s row with China in the news recently. Basically “someone” in China was attacking Google’s services (primarily gmail) in an apparent attempt to get information about civil rights protesters. Google’s response was a bit disconnected in my view…
Back in 2006 Google made a For-China version of it’s site called Google.cn (.cn being the TLD for China), Now it had a chinese language version of it’s service for sometime, but it was being blocked by the Great Firewall to avoid people finding things on the internet that might not agree with the governments official take on national and world events, or even worse, might make them look bad. So, in order for Google to have a workable presence in China, they have to censor their results in a fashion that pleases the Chinese authorities, and so they decided to do that through google.cn. This move brought a lot of flack their way from free-speech activists and other people who don’t like how China works.
So basically, as I understand it google.cn is the site that gived the filtered results and the rest of google doesn’t. Google doesn’t seem to offer its other services through google.cn and presumably they aren’t part of the agreement with the Chinese government like search is. But by using proxies and routing connections through other countries, clever folk can access Gmail and it offers pretty secure (SSL) and pretty anonymous (no name etc required) email based outside China, a good thing for folk who might be trying not to get noticed or found protesting against their government.
But the disjointedness to me is between Google’s findings (that “someone” was attacking their services from China) and their response (to remove filtering from their in-China search). Why does removing the filtering balance out the attacks? And surely Google must be aware that China will just ask them to leave or just block google.cn… Perhaps Google is planning to remove themselves from the Chinese market and simply wants to make a big noise about doing so, while squarely pointing out the attacks made by ”someone”… And I think good for Google. They are a corporation, not a government agency, and they can withdraw from China if the fancy takes them. If other corporations followed suit, China might think twice about it’s policies on censorship which in turn would mean it would have to think twice about abusing people’s civil rights as there wouldn’t be anywhere to hide.
But the truth is that out here in East Asia Google isn’t the same big deal it is in the ‘western world’. Here in Japan no-one talks about Googling things, not many people use gmail, harldy anyone is on picasaweb, Blogger isn’t the blogging site of choice, Android has still to make any real appearance, YouTube is used a bit, but isn’t as clear a winner… The big internet mogul in Japan, and in most of East Asia, is Yahoo! In Japan Yahoo! provides search, online auctions and shopping, maps, news and weather, online TV, financial information, entertainment news, games and more. On top of that it is one of the largest internet service providers in the country, it is in cahoots with my mobile phone company, Softbank, and my future parent’s in law even use Yahoo! as their telephone provider for their home. the most common email address out here is @yahoo.co.jp. Google is even advertising on TV to try and up it’s market share here, I never saw a Google advert in the UK, they didn’t need them. If this is anything to go by China won’t worry about google leaving, there will be some other company that everyone uses. If Google left Japan, most people probably wouln’t notice anything other than improved efficiency at the office because there is no YouTube.
So yeah, that’s my take on the whole thing… Perhaps a well intentioned, if frustrated, move by Google, but will it have any of the effects people are talking about?
But! Be aware I am no expert on China or Chinese politics, quite the opposite, but my mission agency’s background is in China, originally being the China Inland Mission before being kicked out and deciding to serve the rest of East Asia (including Japan! 
) and so there is still a lot of interest in and prayer for China within the organisation… So the story is of a little bit of interest to me, but this rant is the extent of my reporting ability on the subject!
