<nettime> Google

[Sean Cubitt <scubitt@unimelb.edu.au>]

Baidu - the 60% market dominant search engine in .cn - was also hacked (by
the Iranian Cyberarmy') on Tuesday. As Brian notes, proxies (and VPNs) are
mnority but important avenues for avoiding censorship. Seems the hack was
also routed via taiwanese proxies. The Golden Shield (aka Great Firewall)
runs on mirrors too, and tricks like reset black-hole loops.

Cynical view: Dell plan to introduce an Android phone in China this year.
Cute (Nexus One is built in taiwan, so Google's first step into retail
hardware might be less welcome in the PRC). With a rapidly growing 20% plus
of the smartphone market already (mainly at the expense of Simbian and
Blackberry-RIM), will mobile provide what Google need most -- not the
measily forecast of 600m dollars revenue this year but access to Chinese
population as generators of information?

Generous view 1: Google is a forerunner of a new kind of corporation whose
lifeblood is not solely cash but collaboration - a hybrid capitalist-P2P
network. Routing around censorship is a strategic quality of the internet
that actualy needs to be implemented sometimes, not just believed

Generous view 2: The gerontocracy have seen what savage deregulation of an
economy can do over the border in Russia. They plan a strucured, grad=ual
change. Sadly the greed of Wall St precipitated the terminal decline of the
US economy 40 years earlier than planned. They are paternalistic about the
population as well as proprietorial.

The moral superiority of the US is not demonstrated by 1% fall overnight in
the value of Google shares, or the rise of 13% in the values of Baidu's.

Best quote: Xinhua report a government official "seeking information from
Google"


sean


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