[…] As to the whole matter of Google’s motives, I passed along some of the speculation yesterday about whether Google was doing this as a way to exit the market gracefully. I don’t know either way really, and I suppose we’ll learn more later. At this point, I’d have to guess that this was about more than current market share and revenue. I agree with Richard’s take on this (The Peking Duck). […]

January 14, 2010 @ 10:34 am | Pingback

Completely agree with this guy’s analysis. What if the FBI asks Google to give some information on the gmail account of Al Qaeda members, and the great human rights defender Google refuses. And FBI launch cyberattacks on Google’s gmail accounts from the US. What will Google do? Exit the US market? Hahahahah, stop joking me.

Google = garbage + prostitute + thief + bitch.

January 14, 2010 @ 10:43 am | Comment

I think Morozov might be missing what’s right in front of him: It’s not that Google were unaware of cyber threats when they entered the Chinese market, but that attacks on Google have now compromised their China operation to a critical degree – and very likely initiated from within the organization itself, leaving Google’s Sino-adventure in an untenable position.

And if they’re about to be forced out they might as well take a couple of swipes at the enemy on the way down hoping to land a haymaker. Besides, after the way Google has been treated in China, they’re more than entitled.

January 14, 2010 @ 10:49 am | Comment

Stuart,

Those ‘cyberattacks’ happened in California as google have no servers in China. Even if Google exited the China market, the cyberattacks will continue, whether it is coming from China or not.

January 14, 2010 @ 11:24 am | Comment

Blaming non-competitive business performance is exactly what I would expect for a rebuttal, a corporate version of blaming the victim. The idea that Google did this to improve PR is empty-headed at best. How does it help a sophisticated software company to say that they were outsmarted by somebody else?

January 14, 2010 @ 11:56 am | Comment

This is about game theory.And about the truth,I don’t think we will get there,we can get on the surface,not near the surface.

January 14, 2010 @ 12:45 pm | Comment

Pug_ster said:
Those ‘cyberattacks’ happened in California as google have no servers in China. Even if Google exited the China market, the cyberattacks will continue, whether it is coming from China or not.

The attack was mounted via information gained from Chinese routers, not servers, big difference.

You know, after 8 years of arguing with trolls and idiots I’m just going to give up.

January 14, 2010 @ 1:00 pm | Comment

Bob, exactly.

Admiral, Pug never knows what he is talking about. He’s a splendid chap, but always shouts out the first thing that comes into his head, facts and knowledge be damned.

January 14, 2010 @ 1:05 pm | Comment

This guy doesn’t know what he is talking about. Chinese censorship is getting much worse in the past year or so — I could access both picasaweb and youtube in China in 2008 but not last year. It’s easy to understand Google’s frustration.

I don’t know how accurate the following is, but if it’s true, Google made the right call.

博讯北京时间2010年1月13日
相关报道：
谷歌遭来自中国的攻击：为国际商界敲响警钟
表面是商业竞争，实际上，是中国整顿互联网的一部分。
谷歌（google)要撤出中国大陆的消息已经公布，如果实行，将会成为互联网界大事。博讯记者第一时间联系了北京宣传部门有关领导，这位中共官员表示，谷歌撤出中国是迟早的事，只是他们自己还没有意识到。他说，这一次谷歌所谓要撤出中国，应该只是威胁性质的，为了讨价还价，但他们显然打错了算盘，如果说几个月前他们的威胁还有效的话，现在则绝对没有用了，因为这次整顿互联网是提高到亡党亡国的高度，一个谷歌简直是螳臂当车。这次整顿互联网的最终目的就是要把谷歌这种在中国有巨大影响力的搜索引擎完全地管理起来。

这位官员表示，目前谷歌同中方最大的分歧就在于搜索内容的过滤，中国政府要求谷歌像百度一样，实行严格的过滤，不符合中方法律的一律不得进入搜索内容。关于这一点，谷歌和北京也多次讨价还价，好几次达成了互让一步的和解。按说，应该不是问题，然而，这一波整顿清理互联网以来，北京政府感觉相当顺利，网民们的反应也很温顺，几乎没有受到阻力，可见国内互联网业界已经被驯服了。这使得北京政府很有信心，也使得有些官员想借助中央的精神，乘胜追击一鼓作气，把谷歌这种老大难也一起收拾了。

该官员说，这次是否能够协调好，是谷歌这次是否撤出中国的关键，他认为，如果仅仅涉及过滤内容，应该不会有大问题。但问题是，北京互联网也界和商界也有从个人利益出发而暗中希望谷歌滚蛋的，以便中国发展自己的搜索引擎，或者把百度进一步发扬起来。

这位官员还透露，北京对百度的管理相当成功，不但搜索过滤机制已经到位，更重要的是，百度已经按照北京中宣部的指示，在每一次搜索关键词的时候，把中宣部指名的那些网站放在前面，例如人民网、环球网和新华社新闻等。他说，中国网民好像还没有注意到这一变化，他们在搜索自己想找的内容时，将会被最先指到官方网站。这一操作是认为调整排名做到的，和点击、人气无关。

这位官员说，目前并没有要求谷歌这样做，但据他透露，谷歌如果想在中国继续赚钱，他们必须学习百度，也就是接受中宣部的领导，在搜索结果出现时，体现中宣部的教育和舆论引导精神。这位官员对博讯记者说，从他个人观点来看，要求谷歌人为调整搜索排名，突出中共中央精神，可能有些过了。他可以理解内容过滤，但要求谷歌认为干涉搜索结果，把中宣部要求的内容提前，估计谷歌不愿意这么做，因为一旦事件曝光，那就是很大的丑闻。毕竟，谷歌主要业务目前并不在中国大陆。

January 14, 2010 @ 2:16 pm | Comment

Yu’er, what’s the Chinese say? Just for people like me….who can’t read Chinese (yet). A brief abstract will do.

Cheers!

HX
“Google = garbage + prostitute + thief + bitch.”

You got evidence to back this up? 😉 Or you just practising long words?

January 14, 2010 @ 3:57 pm | Comment

The cynical view is born either of bad reading comprehension or willful ignorance. Google is upset that the Chinese government have changed their internet policy from filtering to active prosecution of thought crime.
Say what you will about Google’s decision to be party to the former, when we start talking about the latter, it’s a completely different ball game. Yahoo did the wrong thing; Google is making an enormous effort, at great cost, to do the right thing when it comes to protecting the privacy (and thereby security) of political dissidents.

Anyone who conflates filtering controversial topics with tolerating persecution is as ass, plain and simple.

January 14, 2010 @ 4:52 pm | Comment

@Mike
Here is the brief: a officer from Department of Propaganda said: We donot bought it(the threaten) and request GOOGLE to rank the search-result according to the demand of Gov instead of democratically.

January 14, 2010 @ 6:25 pm | Comment

The GFW officially never exists in china,if you have any problem accessing certain site,it’s the site’s/your ISP’s/yourself’s problem.The government never do anything other than “legally regulate the internet and keep a healthy online atmosphere”.
“I admit,it exists” and vice versa.
Nice logic.

January 14, 2010 @ 6:48 pm | Comment

Theadmiral Richard,

According to google, the cyberattacks come from taiwan and some genius assumed that China is responsible. Cyberattacks are the realities of life as tens of thousands of cyberattacks to us government and private servers every year. And now google is making a hissy fit over this one attack when they don’t have proof that it was originated from the chinese government. Last week hillary had a meeting with the google ceo Eric schmidt about spreading democracy using the internet. This cyberattack is just a yellowcake moment in order to spread decmoracy to china.

January 14, 2010 @ 10:41 pm | Comment

@Mike,

Something like smatter said. Basically, the extent of filtering on google has been an ongoing bargaining process between the Chinese government and google. Now that the Chinese has finished with baidu — baidu not only filters everything the government asks, but also listing government sites on top of search results — the government is thinking about dealing with google for good. In the future, the only way for google to make money in China is to accept the control, “leadership”, of the Department of Propaganda.

January 14, 2010 @ 10:48 pm | Comment

haha, Boxun and ChinaDaily there aren’t much difference bewteen them.

January 14, 2010 @ 11:12 pm | Comment

I believe that Google are now behaving honourably and sensibly.
I think Google believed that the Chinese government would get better; not worse.
Friends in China have told me they’ve not been able to access Gmail without trouble for the last few months.
I think Google put up with a great deal more than they’re telling us about before they considered quitting and I think it’s absurd to think they’d quit – with no obvious way back – because they ‘only’ had a 20% market share.

January 15, 2010 @ 12:42 am | Comment

Google should downplay the cyber-attack story and focus on freedom of Internet. They will get more support from Chinese people if they talk more about YouTube, Google Album, Facebook, Tweeter, etc, being blocked in China. After all these are products that educated Chinese love to use.

January 15, 2010 @ 6:53 am | Comment

“…they don’t have proof that it was originated from the chinese government.”

You don’t need to walk on the Sun to know that you’re going to get your feet burned.

Imagine a binomial distribution where the only two explanations for an event are (A) it was undertaken with state knowledge and blessing, or (B)the state had nothing to do with it.

In this particular instance p(B)= 0. Therefore, p(A) = 1-0.

Simple. They did it.

There are two reasons the Chinese government refuse to put cyber espionage on the agenda at top level meetings with the US: (i) they’re getting too much out of it, and (ii) they want to maintain deniability.

January 15, 2010 @ 9:56 am | Comment

Stuart,

You don’t need to walk on the Sun to know that you’re going to get your feet burned.

There are two reasons the Chinese government refuse to put cyber espionage on the agenda at top level meetings with the US: (i) they’re getting too much out of it, and (ii) they want to maintain deniability.

Seriously, your flawed logic started to sound more like Math’s.

January 15, 2010 @ 10:07 am | Comment

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15iht-edcohen.html?ref=global
“Nobody here can be surprised that China has been trying to hack into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, among other cyberattacks. That’s consistent with the prevailing mood. Google is on the money when it says China is a great nation behind much of the world’s growth today but that its actions go “to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech.””

January 15, 2010 @ 11:33 am | Comment

“Seriously, your flawed logic started to sound more like Math’s.”

I’ll take that as an artistic compliment. OK, try this:

http://shar.es/aRZ44

As I was saying; they did it.

January 15, 2010 @ 11:49 am | Comment

Stuart,

I’ll take that as an artistic compliment. OK, try this:

As I was saying; they did it.

Did you read the article? Where exactly in the article says that the Chinese Government was responsible for that attack on Google last month?

January 15, 2010 @ 1:04 pm | Comment

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/world/asia/15diplo.html?ref=global-home

“Seeing the breadth of the problem, they alerted American intelligence and law enforcement officials and worked with them to assemble powerful evidence that the masterminds of the attacks were not in Taiwan, but on the Chinese mainland.

But while much of the evidence, including the sophistication of the attacks, strongly suggested an operation run by Chinese government agencies, or at least approved by them, company engineers could not definitively prove their case. Today that uncertainty, along with concerns about confronting the Chinese without strong evidence, has frozen the Obama administration’s response to the intrusion, one of the biggest cyberattacks of its kind, and to some extent the response of other targets, including some of the most prominent American companies. ”

If you’re going to do this sort of stuff, I guess you’re not going to leave a monogrammed hanky lying around…as it were.

January 15, 2010 @ 5:09 pm | Comment

And…
““Everything we are learning is that in this case the Chinese government got caught with its hand in the cookie jar,” said James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who consulted for the White House on cybersecurity last spring. “Would it hold up in court? No. But China is the only government in the world obsessed about Tibet, and that issue goes right to the heart of their vision of political survival and putting down the separatists’ movements.” ”
Same source as above.

January 15, 2010 @ 5:10 pm | Comment

Some food for thought:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/One-held-for-posting-obscene-Orkut-message-on-Sonia/articleshow/3049971.cms
Guess “don’t do evil” is harder than we thought to a commercial organization.
But as a Chinese netizen my self,I’m still glad that someone as big as google decided to say ‘no’ to the over the top internet suppression,whatever its motives.

January 15, 2010 @ 8:59 pm | Comment

You may find out actually many Chinese people has never used or even heard of Facebook, twitter and youtube, and why do they have to use those if there are Kaixin,Youku, for most Chinese who doesn’t care about politics those are much more user friendly to them, and more related to their life. So the block of Facebook, youtube and twitter may sounds like the end of the internet for people in Europe or US, it doesn’t have the same impact on an ordinary Chinese, at least not at the near future, but I believe the withdraw of Google will eventually change the perspective of development of China’s internet.

January 15, 2010 @ 9:07 pm | Comment

@Mike 24

I agree. Under the circumstances, it could be very well that the Chinese government has done this because they have the motives for it. However, there is no definitive proof that goes back to the Chinese government. However, the Western Media, including Hillary assumed that the Chinese government was at fault.

I think there might be other explanations of why this happened. Rumors is that some of google’s internal employees has stolen google’s gmail code and try to use the 0 day exploit to be used in the cyberattack. This explains of why many of google’s employees in China has taken a paid leave for not coming to work.

The 3rd possibility is a yellowcake moment by google and the US government to frame the Chinese government responsible. As I said, cyberattacks happen everyday in every industrialized countries (including in China) yet many countries don’t point at fingers at who did it except this case. Yet I find it suspicious that Hillary had a meeting with the google ceo and a bunch of thinktanks promoting democracy last week and next week Hillary is going to announce a policy to promote ‘internet freedom’ in countries like China.

@Stuart 22,

Yes there are ‘cyberwarriors’ in China, but so is in Russia, UK, US, Israel, and in many other industrial countries. So I find it kind of disingenuous of the US pointing fingers to China of cyberattacks when US does the same thing to China all the time.

January 15, 2010 @ 11:34 pm | Comment

Under the circumstances, it could be very well that the Chinese government has done this because they have the motives for it. However, there is no definitive proof that goes back to the Chinese government. However, the Western Media, including Hillary assumed that the Chinese government was at fault.

This is not a mere assumption. It’s based on a vast amount of circumstantial evidence, though there is no smoking gun. Yet.

So I find it kind of disingenuous of the US pointing fingers to China of cyberattacks when US does the same thing to China all the time.

There is, to my knowledge, no claims of any sort that the US has ever committed cyber-atacks. It is a fact that they have the ability to do so and have developed the technology necessary. In China’s case, there is a lot of reason to at least suspect the government’s involvement in actual, documented cyber-attacks. If there are similar cases wherein the US has been suspected of documented attacks, please share. Until then, as usual, I maintain you are just making stuff up.

January 16, 2010 @ 12:03 am | Comment

There is, to my knowledge, no claims of any sort that the US has ever committed cyber-atacks. It is a fact that they have the ability to do so and have developed the technology necessary. In China’s case, there is a lot of reason to at least suspect the government’s involvement in actual, documented cyber-attacks. If there are similar cases wherein the US has been suspected of documented attacks, please share. Until then, as usual, I maintain you are just making stuff up.

Of course, No Such Agency are the biggest employers of mathematicians and they buy the most advanced supercomputers. I suppose that they use the manpower and computer power to say — predict the weather for the next 10 days. While you are at it, China is not capable to do cyberattacks because the Chinese cyberattack force does not officially exist.

January 16, 2010 @ 12:25 am | Comment

There is a lot of evidence of major cyber-attacks coming from China. Are there allegations of major cyber-attacks coming from the US, or has any government ever asserted the US is behind such attacks even if they can’t be traced to the US? Where are you coming from? What are you talking about? Do you ever have any justification for any of your accusations? The US has the capability to do just about anything it wants, like blow up the entire planet or spread germs that can kill millions. That doesn’t mean you can make the accusation that we’ve actually done these things. Well, I guess you can make such an accusation, but if you don’t explain the grounds behind your reasoning, such as where and when the US did such a thing, then we know you’re living up to your reputation for shouting the first thing that comes into your head. If it’s bad and it can be done, the US has done it! Facts, evidence, logic be damned!

January 16, 2010 @ 1:36 am | Comment

Richard,

The only reason why a good number of cyber-attacks come from China is because many computers there don’t have the adequate protection against malware and viruses. Not to mention that many computers there use pirated versions of windows which does not allow you to get windows updates. Now anybody from any country can easily slip a trojan or virus and have thousands of zombie computers at his command. Technically, anybody could’ve pulled off the cyberattack last month because of that.

January 16, 2010 @ 2:54 am | Comment

You’re ignoring my question. You state as a matter of fact that “US does the same thing [cyber-attacks] to China all the time.” What are you basing this on?

This is not about “slipping in a trojan.” This is about a massive cyber-crime aimed at specific MNCs in China, highly coordinated and on a scale that makes it unbelievable to think there wasn’t government involvement (though as I’ve said, there is still no smoking gun). This is not about people not having updated versions of Windows. Your obtuseness is astonishing. (And no, that doesn’t mean I think you’re fat.)

January 16, 2010 @ 3:21 am | Comment

Richard,

Seriously, why don’t you read the article that Stuart provided in #22? You don’t have to believe me or the article.

You seriously don’t know how a trojan work. Someone can program a trojan to attack a website at a certain time with a specific attack code. I could tell that you are not an security expert so I don’t expect you to understand.

January 16, 2010 @ 3:35 am | Comment

Love the way you evade my questions. I don’t care about the article – I care about your flippantly claiming the US has launched cyber-attacks and then failing to back up your asinine accusation.

January 16, 2010 @ 3:45 am | Comment

Since you didn’t bother to read the article, it says:

Cyber warfare is part of every developed country’s 21st century arsenal. Although no U.S. official will admit it, the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA regularly probe and try to hack into China’s military and industrial computer networks to obtain the information that years ago were brought back by the James Bonds of spy services. The U.S., and many of our European allies, try to find ways to wreck some havoc in the Chinese computer grid if a conflict ever takes place.

US and China won’t admit that there is such a thing. Personally, I don’t care if you believe this or not.

January 16, 2010 @ 4:45 am | Comment

Dont waste your time with 50 cents posters Richard.

January 16, 2010 @ 4:47 am | Comment

pug, listen hard: you said the US committed cyber-attacks. We both know the US and most countries have the capability to carry out such attacks. You said they have performed cyber-attacks. Yet, predictably, you have no idea what you’re talking about, nothing to refer us to, not even an accusation by China, proven or not, that the US is engaging in cyber-crime against her,

Let me give you an analogy. Let’s say I state categorically that Chinese soldiers are killing Tibetan farmers. Well, come on, here’s my evidence – the soldiers are in Tibet and they have guns, and they can kill the farmers. So it’s probably true so I’ll just state it as a fact. Why not?

Here’s why not: Because it’s complete and total bullshit, a fantasy. Again, the word obtuse comes immediately to mind as I look with wonder at your inability to draw distinctions that aren’t even all that subtle, such as having the means to do something vs. actually doing it. Put on your thinking cap and try to grasp the distinction. It’s really not that hard. And that’s the last I want to hear about this nonsense.

January 16, 2010 @ 4:55 am | Comment

Eco, you’re totally right. I had him on my troll list for a long time and graciously removed him because I thought he was trying to engage, but this is ridiculous. Time to reconsider?

January 16, 2010 @ 5:02 am | Comment

Richard,

Gee, your flawed logic about the Chinese soldiers killing Tibetan farmers started to sound more like Math. All you have to say is that I don’t think it is true that US commits cyberattacks and I would have said nothing.

January 16, 2010 @ 5:12 am | Comment

Pug, the flawed logic was intentional – to show you how you are thinking. I’ve asked you 100 times why you made your claim, and still you can’t even begin to answer.

All you have to say is that I don’t think it is true that US commits cyberattacks and I would have said nothing.

I don’t think it is true that US commits cyberattacks.

But that isn’t the point – the point was to a. either tell us why you are making such a serious claim, or b. admit you’re either ignorant or making stuff up again. And I think we all know what the answer is.

January 16, 2010 @ 5:28 am | Comment

Their aim is not to engage, their aim is to disengage others, and when they don’t succeed then try to hijack the discussions.

The funniest thing is what they enter in a feed back loop with some team mate (who may be even the same person)

Their main objective… scare away those that want to engage. Who may feel comfortable with Net Nanny elves are prowling around?

January 16, 2010 @ 6:02 am | Comment

Richard, love your posts and the work, and while I support the intent to allow open debate, nonsensical trolls like pug should simply be back on the list and not insulting our intelligence with non-sequiturs.

January 16, 2010 @ 1:45 pm | Comment

[…] really, a company doesn’t have feelings, it doesn’t respond to notions like love or ethics. Only people do that. And, in the case of Google, only Page, Brin and Schmidt have that kind of […]

January 20, 2010 @ 8:08 pm | Pingback