2006 1
Google vs Microsoft
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Why do I have the feeling that Bill Gates is making a “been there done that” T Shirt to send to the people at Google? Been there, been trashed, been there, fought the US government, been there, fought the Chinese, been there done that. At Davos when Eric Schmidt said that Google thought long and hard about its choices and decided to offer most of its search capabilities but not all in China, Bill Gates replied, that´s “do less evil”. He was having a ball. Still my heart is with Google. To me and I think to most, there´s still a huge difference on how Google succeeded vs how Microsoft succeeded.
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Declan O'Connor on February 15, 2006 ·
Well of course I’m biased, but I prefer the more neutral approach to Chinese Search Engine Domains at http://www.dumbfind.cn taken by Dumbfind’s CEO Chris Seline: (http://www.dumbfind.com/corp/press/pressdocs/pr2006-01-30.jsp)
Why should any search engine company deem it acceptable to have ZERO hits returned for an innocuous search for a Western media source like the BBC on Google’s Chinese .CN site:
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=site%3Anews.bbc.co.uk
When the very same search on Google’s International .COM site yields 33 Million hits:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=site%3Anews.bbc.co.uk
It just doesn’t make sense to acquiesce to China’s demands. If short profiteering at the expense of the Chinese people is not evil then what is? Dumbfind encourages other search engines to allow Chinese users experience the same unrestricted levels of search freedom to which the rest of us are accustomed. It’s not a case of adopting the high moral ground, at gut level it just doesn’t feel right to do anything less. By rendering online political censorship in China as something acceptable or inevitable, it helps us to sleep easier by numbing our collective conscience.
When Yahoo released data leading to the arrest of Li Zhi, the online writer who was jailed for eight years, after posting comments that simply criticised official corruption, did anyone draw a sharp breath in the West? … or did we sleep soundly … comfortably numb:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4695718.stm
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/02/14/google060214.html
Thoughts?