Sean Cubitt on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:18:35 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Google |
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 # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org