Actually Dean I've found some folks who have nice smart bits of paper who say doing buisness in china isn't really profitable either. It just looks like it is
It's not always wise to poke your finger in the giant's eye, just because you can.
Individuals can choose to do this for personal reasons, and Governments can do it for political reason, but to expect a publically owned company to do it for reasons OTHER than profits cannot be expected.
Google, Yahoo and all the others answer to their advertisers and investors. Until they, the "owners" speak up, don't expect statements or actions from these companies, that effect the bottom line.
As I've said to my wife several times... If you don't like what Company "A" is doing, don't purchase Company "A" product and services.
i basically agree with ender, although i don't think china is "the giant," by any means.
dean is correct that google could have chosen not to work with china on its censorship tools, but the result of that would have just been google being blocked to internet users in china. once that happens, it's duplicitous to contend that google can still "do business" in china. while individual chinese may be interested or enterprising enough to circumvent the china national filter and access google, no chinese company (selling products in china, that is) is going to bother advertising on a blocked site. they would simply do business with sina, or some similar site.
whether google should or should not have cooperated with the chinese government is a completely separate matter. but i don't think there is any real, meaningful way for google to have done business in china without playing by the government's rules.
having just returned from traveling in china today, however, i can say that the amount of filtered content was fairly infuriating. couldn't even access my own site, as geocities is completely blocked.
Nope. It's entirely plausible for them to have done business in China anyway. Once again, all you need to do is understand the technology, and realize that they could have based in Taiwan, to understand why there was a third way and they were amoral bastards to choose this one.
As for Ender's statement: he's absolutely right. To expect publically-traded (I think he meant publicly-traded, not owned) company to do anything for reasons OTHER than profits cannot be expected. Google's marketing hype was that it would not behave in this way. Its actions in China showed that this was a lie.
This description of the behavior of publicly-trade corporation is also exactly, and I do mean exactly, why free market ideologues need to be smacked in the face just a little more often. The great Adam Smith was vehement that raw capitalism unfettered by moral concerns or state regulation would be a horrible thing. It's why regulation of commerce is written straight into the Constitution as a fundamental duty of government.
Zach: as has already been demonstrated, there are coiuntless technical ways to get around any government firewalls. Basing in Taiwan gives them full access to Chinese language and Chinese programmers and to a market that trades with mainland China. Google has all sorts of ways they could implement technically that would make them impossible to effectively be blocked by the government and there'd be plenty of people who'd advertise on them, claiming they were just for Taiwanese companies but they'd wind up with business in Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc. anyway. International companies too.
Bottom line: the either/or choice is a false dichotomy. They picked the EASIEST choice, and the ones that would lead to quickest immediate profit.
Basing in Taiwan gives them full access to Chinese language
Well, no. Taiwanese language is a mix of Mandarin and Fujianhua, and has peculiarities that make it different from Mandarin on the mainland. But that's a small point: a more significant difference is that most Taiwanese use traditional characters, while most people on the mainland use simplified. This means a Taiwanese Google would be traditional characters first, which goes against the simplified character presentation of google.cn. Also, Taiwan lacks any standard romanization system, unlike the mainland. One of the nicer features of google.com/cn is automatic conversion of pinyin into characters during searches. This feature would be lost on a hypothetical google.tw.
Beyond the language issues, the creation of a google.tw site would be seen by the Chinese government as Google's recognition of Taiwan's independent status, and would result in google.tw and google.com being blocked on the mainland in retaliation. Basically, it would be a death sentence for Google in the Chinese market.
You've neatly dodged one aspect of proxying, which is that it tends to clash with electronic commerce and advertising. Many proxy programs block ads outright. As such, it's not a matter of getting the quickest immediate profit by going with google.cn, it's a matter of getting profit, period.
I don't quite get what the problem is. When a foreign firm such as Toyota of Japan or Siemens of Germany does business here in the US, you rightfully expect that they will obey all of our laws and conform to all of our business regulations. Why wouldn't you expect the same for companies operating and doing business in China.
The bottom line is, whether you agree with them or not, if you expect to openly do business in another country, you should expect to have to conform to their laws and customs.
Dean, how's this for an idea: Google &company knew of these end-runs from the start, and are perfectly aware that the Chinese government is -to a great degree- wasting their time trying to control information.
A good reason not to set up a Taiwan-based, Chinese-language operation is that China considers that national territory, and would probably view the operation as an hostile act.
So the companies make money, get a lot of bad PR, and snicker up their sleeves about how they really aren't repressing people all that much.
But then, I've never been a fanatic, "whole-loaf" kinda guy...
as matthew has already pointed out, there are significant differences between taiwan and mainland china that makes basing there not a panacea to cultural sensitivities. but the point i'm trying to make is that there is no effective way google can have it both ways. it cannot be firewalled and still do business in china. there is no third way around this impasse. whether losing the chinese market is a price worth paying for rare corporate scruples is a question each corporation decides for itself, but to say that google can have its cake and eat it too, if only it had thought hard enough, is an untrue statement.
even if google managed, somehow, to present itself on the web in an unblockable form: no chinese company is going to bother advertising on a (even if only in theory) banned site. it's simply too hot for any chinese business to touch.
To expand upon Zach's point, are we to honestly assume that a Chinese or foreign company that wants to reach mainland Chinese audiences by advertising on "google.tw" or google.com would accept the fact that the only way potential customers would see their ads is if they (1) had a proxy and (2) were lucky enough that their ads weren't blocked by the proxy service? That's just goofy.
Also, a point I meant to add to my original comment: mainland Chinese rarely go to .tw sites because of political reasons and also because .cn is more familiar to them. (In fact, many Chinese netizens are nationalistic to the point that they bristle at the existence of the .tw domain.) To get them to go to a "google.tw" site would require a vast shift in China's political culture, one that Google would be unable to effect.
Individuals can choose to do this for personal reasons, and Governments can do it for political reason, but to expect a publically owned company to do it for reasons OTHER than profits cannot be expected.
Google, Yahoo and all the others answer to their advertisers and investors. Until they, the "owners" speak up, don't expect statements or actions from these companies, that effect the bottom line.
As I've said to my wife several times... If you don't like what Company "A" is doing, don't purchase Company "A" product and services.
dean is correct that google could have chosen not to work with china on its censorship tools, but the result of that would have just been google being blocked to internet users in china. once that happens, it's duplicitous to contend that google can still "do business" in china. while individual chinese may be interested or enterprising enough to circumvent the china national filter and access google, no chinese company (selling products in china, that is) is going to bother advertising on a blocked site. they would simply do business with sina, or some similar site.
whether google should or should not have cooperated with the chinese government is a completely separate matter. but i don't think there is any real, meaningful way for google to have done business in china without playing by the government's rules.
having just returned from traveling in china today, however, i can say that the amount of filtered content was fairly infuriating. couldn't even access my own site, as geocities is completely blocked.
As for Ender's statement: he's absolutely right. To expect publically-traded (I think he meant publicly-traded, not owned) company to do anything for reasons OTHER than profits cannot be expected. Google's marketing hype was that it would not behave in this way. Its actions in China showed that this was a lie.
This description of the behavior of publicly-trade corporation is also exactly, and I do mean exactly, why free market ideologues need to be smacked in the face just a little more often. The great Adam Smith was vehement that raw capitalism unfettered by moral concerns or state regulation would be a horrible thing. It's why regulation of commerce is written straight into the Constitution as a fundamental duty of government.
could you be more clear as to how basing yourself in taiwan would change anything? does the chinese firewall not block any taiwanese content?
Bottom line: the either/or choice is a false dichotomy. They picked the EASIEST choice, and the ones that would lead to quickest immediate profit.
Well, no. Taiwanese language is a mix of Mandarin and Fujianhua, and has peculiarities that make it different from Mandarin on the mainland. But that's a small point: a more significant difference is that most Taiwanese use traditional characters, while most people on the mainland use simplified. This means a Taiwanese Google would be traditional characters first, which goes against the simplified character presentation of google.cn. Also, Taiwan lacks any standard romanization system, unlike the mainland. One of the nicer features of google.com/cn is automatic conversion of pinyin into characters during searches. This feature would be lost on a hypothetical google.tw.
Beyond the language issues, the creation of a google.tw site would be seen by the Chinese government as Google's recognition of Taiwan's independent status, and would result in google.tw and google.com being blocked on the mainland in retaliation. Basically, it would be a death sentence for Google in the Chinese market.
You've neatly dodged one aspect of proxying, which is that it tends to clash with electronic commerce and advertising. Many proxy programs block ads outright. As such, it's not a matter of getting the quickest immediate profit by going with google.cn, it's a matter of getting profit, period.
The bottom line is, whether you agree with them or not, if you expect to openly do business in another country, you should expect to have to conform to their laws and customs.
A good reason not to set up a Taiwan-based, Chinese-language operation is that China considers that national territory, and would probably view the operation as an hostile act.
So the companies make money, get a lot of bad PR, and snicker up their sleeves about how they really aren't repressing people all that much.
But then, I've never been a fanatic, "whole-loaf" kinda guy...
as matthew has already pointed out, there are significant differences between taiwan and mainland china that makes basing there not a panacea to cultural sensitivities. but the point i'm trying to make is that there is no effective way google can have it both ways. it cannot be firewalled and still do business in china. there is no third way around this impasse. whether losing the chinese market is a price worth paying for rare corporate scruples is a question each corporation decides for itself, but to say that google can have its cake and eat it too, if only it had thought hard enough, is an untrue statement.
even if google managed, somehow, to present itself on the web in an unblockable form: no chinese company is going to bother advertising on a (even if only in theory) banned site. it's simply too hot for any chinese business to touch.
Also, a point I meant to add to my original comment: mainland Chinese rarely go to .tw sites because of political reasons and also because .cn is more familiar to them. (In fact, many Chinese netizens are nationalistic to the point that they bristle at the existence of the .tw domain.) To get them to go to a "google.tw" site would require a vast shift in China's political culture, one that Google would be unable to effect.