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May 19, 2013

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Ear to the Ground

Microsoft Hunkers Down in China

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Posted on Mar 26, 2010

Call its decision soulless and/or good business, Microsoft has decided to stay in China despite the departure of its competitor, Google, from the country after a row between the government and the search site over the censorship of Web pages.

Microsoft said it would stay in China and continue to obey the country’s censorship laws, which include forbidding pictures of tanks and protests when one searches for “Tiananmen Square,” for example.

Google believed that moving its operations to Hong Kong, outside China’s Great Firewall, would shame its competitors into leaving the country as well, thus allowing Google to preserve its market share and international clout. —JCL

The Guardian:

Hopes that Google’s forthright stand on censorship in China would inspire other companies to follow suit appeared unfounded today, with the move instead threatening to widen the rift between some of the world’s most powerful internet companies.

Microsoft, which has considerable interests in the country, including its Bing search engine, responded directly to criticism by Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin, who this week accused the company of speaking against human rights and free speech.

Brin, who pressed for the closing down of Google’s self-censored Chinese search engine, said yesterday: “I’m very disappointed for them in particular.”

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By MsftGoog, May 19, 2010 at 4:13 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

GOOG saw themselves losing market share & not making money (Baidu kicks their Chinese arse), so they took the opportunity to drop a failing business & earn some absurd good will from sound-bite pundits.  GOOG obeys stupid US laws (patriot act, anyone?), but they should be commended for leaving China because they don’t obey stupid Chinese laws?  Total crap.  GOOG is just as evil as MSFT ever was.  They just won’t admit it.

As for various politicians expressing their concern that MSFT didn’t follow GOOG’s lead, they can preach to a corporation (you know:  an entity legally required to try to generate profit) after they revoke China’s most favored nation status.

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By stone13th, March 27, 2010 at 7:00 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Microsoft is right. Google is unwise. We Chinese hate that censorship more than you Americans do. But no one has got disheartened with that. Hours ago I attended a debate about you Americans, over something that is 100% forbidden: the American styled democracy. A Chinese, who studied in US for years, came up with a web article about how the Americans slaughtered thirty million American Indians in the past centuries. An army of 13375 people got roused and took part in the debate, with 90% (I guess) of them shouting in defense of the Americans, mostly in forbidden phrases. The following is a poem one participant contributed to that debate. It is so moving that I so very much want to put it into English so as to share with you, with this reminder: Censorship is not all; the will of speech is.

Why are you guy at the top-floor fond of cheating?*
“I want to show Americans their vices,” says he beaming.?

“Why he wants to show them their vices,” you wonder.
“He’s got brain-choked with waste matter,” I venture an answer.
??
“How come he got waste matter choked, on earth?”
“He’s been found good for nothing,” in the American views of worth.?

Why is he good for nothing in the American views?
“He looks like a crook,” so Americans consider him no use.

* Guy (babe) on the top-floor is my version of an interesting Chinese web phrase (??): a person who has opened a topic on the web. Those who join the discussion are called guy (babe) on the 10th floor, 30th floor, etc.

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Hulk2008's avatar

By Hulk2008, March 26, 2010 at 4:18 pm Link to this comment

How much more evidence is needed that corporations lend NO allegiance to ANY nation ? 

Gates & Co. do what profits Microsoft - not what might be ethical or liberty-producing.

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