Google threatens to leave China

Interesting piece; is Google, Inc., finally smelling the coffee?

Corporate America has usually been extremely forgiving of the PRC government's repressive antics as it does not want to be excluded from a feeding trough of goldmine potential. However this last bit may have been too much for even Google to stomach. Maybe now Cisco systems will remove the hardware bugs it puts into its routers at the request of the Chinese government? As for Google actually walking their talk, I'm going to take a wait and see attitude. For them to suggest this in a "back channel" manner (on a blog instead of a news conference) leaves open the possibility that Google is probably willing to negotiate with the Chinese government.

Other links to story:
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtrader...hreatens-to-leave-china-over-security-breach/
http://www.wesh.com/technology/22220472/detail.html

 

This is really an odd move by Google to pull out of China entirely, and curiously the decision coincided with the year in which Google is getting trounced by Baidu search engine. Baidu dominates almost 80% of China's search traffic while Google fell to 15% this year. Maybe they made a business decision to pull out of a losing battle.

 

I guarantee a 101% Baidu's Stock shot up like a rocket after hearing this news,, LOL Unlike GM, VW or KFC, Google doesn't have anything of real value. Google moves itself out of Chinese market, it's it own loss, not a big deal for Chinese.

 

I guess google is not used to being bully by someone. And beside, if google does leave China than it is google's lose, I mean there is alot of money to be made in China.

 

Google is far from invincible and Google can be beat. China is not the only marketplace where Google has failed because of its inability to adapt to the local market, so you can't just blame everything on censorship. In fact at 15% - 20% market share, Google has done far better in China than Korea, the ONLY market in the world where Google has truly failed in epic proporitions. At a paltry 7% of Korea's market, it is THE lowest and only single digit percentage market share that Google has anywhere in the world. The local search engine Naver commands the lion's share at 70% and in the Top 5 of most used search engines in the world. It may be hard to believe for all of you, but Google is in its final death throes in Korea, just last month they overhauled the contents of Google Korea in a last desperate gambit (It is now the FIRST and ONLY Google version to feature content other than just the searchbox on its mainpage) but despite that, it's crisis in Korea is only deepening. Since Korea's a free country, you can't place the blame any external factors for Google's failures, its shortcomings are solely its own, its failure to adapt and cater to the unique demands of the local market, which may also be what happened in China.


Google is even taking lessons from its failures and copying off of Naver's brilliant UGC content network to incorporate into its own future plans. Korean ingenuity ftw.

In Korea, NHN Makes Google a Midget

For Korean-language search results, the company's Naver portal trounces Google. Adding services for its users keeps it ahead

Song Ji Won checks Google to look for English Web documents, but that's once in a long while. When the 20-year-old college student wants quick search results in her everyday life, she goes to her favorite portal: Naver, run by South Korean company NHN, No. 19 on this year's BusinessWeek Asia 50. "None of my friends pays any attention to Google when it comes to information in Korean," says Song.

Few would question Google's (GOOG) dominance in the U.S. and Europe, where the company rules Internet search (BusinessWeek.com, 6/17/08). Not so in northeast Asia, particularly in Korea, where Google is just a minnow. The benchmark search engine here is Naver. After eight years of Korean-language search service, Google accounts for less than 2.5% of search page views in Korea. That compares with 74% for Naver, which is expected to earn about $580 million in search-related ads this year.

One reason for Google's poor performance is the lack of abundant Web documents in Korean. Recognizing their advantage, NHN executives made concerted efforts to create their own content and build up Naver's database with partnerships with content owners. To keep its edge, NHN blocked rivals from accessing the trove. "Under such an environment, Google simply doesn't show relevant results appealing to local users despite its excellent search engine," says Wayne Lee, Internet analyst at brokerage Woori Investment & Securities.

Meeting the Net Needs of Koreans
One weapon NHN has used to slay Google is the ability to convince users to create content within its system. Take its six-year-old service called Knowledge-In. The program, since copied by other local portals, lets users ask and answer questions on anything from cooking recipes to life sciences. Readers judge the responses, and the millions of people who have answered questions are ranked as "ordinary," "knowledgeable," "highly knowledgeable," "supernatural," or "gods." Naver's database now has about 95 million questions-and-answers that can get returned with search results.

Knowledge-In is just one of many initiatives Naver has taken to get ahead of the pack. During the Beijing Olympics in August, for example, the Korean portal relayed every single development of popular baseball games virtually in real time in text for those unable to watch TVupdating the game every 10 seconds together with comments by two popular local coaches. During the final game, in which the Koreans won the gold medal, some 100,000 readers responded with their own comments, many of them to cheer the players.

NHN execs believe the company's dominance in Korea is thanks to its focus on identifying local Netizens' needs and ensuring they are met. "Our services during the Olympics are just one example of our strength in planning to differentiate ourselves," says NHN Director Kim Sang Hun. "It's a victory through thorough planning." The company has also forged partnerships with 800 organizations owning rich databasesincluding the government's Office of Statistics, the Parliamentary library, and the Korean Film Councilto make their data, images, and video available on the Web. It set aside nearly $50 million this year to finance such campaigns.

Asia Expansion Push
Google acknowledges that Korean portals' policy of preventing rivals from accessing their internal data has limited its growth. But more important, the U.S. search juggernaut has been slow in getting serious in Korea, where it set up a research and development center only late in 2006. "It takes more than a year for the R&D center to bring out localized services," says Google Korea spokesperson Lois Kim. "We are confident our presence in Korea will soon begin growing in earnest."

Yet with the prospect of a major economic slowdown at home and abroad, NHN investors seem to be taking a grim view of the hitherto star performer. NHN stock has plunged 37% so far this year, much worse than a 25% fall in the Seoul bourse's benchmark Kospi index. Woori Investment expects the company's operating profit to rise 36% to $481 million this year on revenues of $1.14 billion, up 37% from last year when sales grew a much faster 61%.

NHN insiders put on a brave face. Execs believe the company's new emphasis on its online games, which account for about 30% of its revenues, and a renewed push overseas will give it a fresh impetus for growth. Already in Japan, it is the largest game portal with 27 million subscribers. There NHN plans to reintroduce its search service later this year after pulling back in 2004 following four years of a disappointing experiment. If Japan proves a fertile ground for its search business, it will move on to China where it owns half of Ourgame.com, a large game portal there. "We don't think Google is a serious threat in Korea," says NHN Director Kim. "The challenge for us is our push overseas."


http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/sep2008/gb2008095_505433.htm?chan=globalbiz_special+report+--+asia

 

facebook is banned,coz they have xiaonei,youtube is banned,coz they have youku,twitter is banned,coz they have sina,MSN is not popular,coz they have QQ,now if google is out of china,that must coz they have baidu^^

 

The CCP is rapidly developing an informational intranet and removing its population from the at large internet. In other words, just about all information will be first vetted by or for the Chinese government before their citizens can have access. While this may be good for the PRC government and Chinese business, but ultimately it isn't good for the Chinese people at all.

 

it mainly that they got hundreds under 1 IP address so they get banned by everything ... well thats a factor
but heck that article put a smile to me cos it made my day
google got owned

 

didn't expect to see an article like this lol

 

not a good new ...-whistle

 

Don't worry about it....this is not the first time China-US get into a little tangle.

it's like the bf makes his gf cry, but at the end of the day, they kiss and make up and live happily ever after. lol

China's not gonna be the girl in the relationship though. if America doesn't wanna be the girl either then they're gonna have to be a gay couple. hahaha

And this CIA-Google is all TALKZ but no actions.....they ain't goin anywhere but stay put in China, llol Typical america drama..we're use to it...

 

not new news

 

I am just wondering.

Why threaten to pull out of China when they can just simply pull out ?

I mean whats stopping them ? Would it hurt China ? Oh geee. China would be severely affected ?

Google is a business outfit. It is not as if they are big in philanthropy and giving the world free service. Even in the US, certain information are censored from the google search engine itself. If they have to bark at the lack of freedom of information, they should start from their own backyard first.

 

Yeah, exactly...Take Germany for example, Google doesn't have a problem with censoring the Nazi/Holocaust but they make a big fuss over censoring Tianmen Square and Dalai Lama stuff. Why? Though culturally insensitive, the germans and europeans can decide for themselves whether the nazi contents are good or bad,is there a need to censor them in a democratic, free society? just as how they expect the chinese to have a free flow of info and the right to make their own conclusions.

I bet 100 years later no one will know the exact story behind the Nazi and what they did and then maybe in the future this holocaust will repeat again because their are no information left for people to learn from the past. The west is such a hypocrite. They sure loves to talk about human rights. if the west are such a moral being then why did they not protect them off say 20 years ago? I see, so because china is doing better than them that they feel threatened and the need to destabalize that country.

I also think that the west should stop censor their illegal war and show all the information and let the public know what they have been doing for the last 100 years. I also want the CIA to release all the tapes that was recorded by cameras install on streets and buildings that have planes crashing into the pentagon 9/11 yet they took all the tapes and who knows where those fotages are now. Stop censoring and show the truth. And stop censoring Iraq war and show the true ammount of innocent civilians dead. Iraq was the most powerful secular nation in the Middle East. It had Christians in position of power. Women could drive there. It had NOTHING to do with 9/11. But the idiots in the Bush administration destroyed it and now Iraq is a religious nation with Christians being wiped out and women forced back into the burqua. Meanwhile, Al Qaida is running free. Thank you, Bush and your murderous Jew neo-cons.

 

Not about money

Some of you insisted on Google losing money over this pulling out of china situation. Why would you think that when Google's worth is in the number of zeros that we cannot imagine. It has always been the owners of Google to delivery honest and untainted business. With China forcing the issue of censorship, Google just does not want to deal with hence wanting to pull out. Sometimes it is not about the money.

 

No Youtube for China. That's too bad.

 

you know being a chinese myself and i think that chinese people dont even care if google pull out from China all together because there are more ppl in China use baidu then use google

and we know how to use proxies too so this decision of google is epic fail