Geoff Ng…Around

So China’s had it in for Google for a while now.  It blocked them last April under very flimsy charges that they were pushing porn (charges  later proven to be false), and now Google’s come back accusing the government of hacking the email accounts of human rights activists in China.  But good on Google for sticking up for itself.  It buckled a bit when it promised to self-censor Google.cn and now it’s getting it’s balls back, in a very smart way.  I can’ see Google pulling out–worldwide domination would be impossible if you’re not in China–but at the same time China would seem backwards as hell for censoring the world’s largest Internet company.  (Whether or not China sees this as a backwards move is another story; their hubris can be incredible.)  And as far as I can tell, most of China’s netizens are sympathetic to Google’s concerns.

I have a friend who works for Google here, and according to him, Google’s known about the attacks for almost a year now.  It’s unclear why they didn’t act sooner, but the timing makes China’s attacks on the search giant clearer–it’s the old “you can’t fire me, I quit!” strategy.  The initial Baidu-influenced reasons offered for the initial attack aren’t nearly as convincing–Baidu is already killing Google here in China.

By the way, did anyone else catch the lead story from yesterday’s China Daily?  ”Hackers attack Baidu [China's biggest search engine]“.  Way to shift the blame.   (And truth be told, a savvy PR move.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Life in China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.