[iDC] Google in China: Protecting Activists by Protesting Industrial Policy?

[Anderson, Ken]

It strikes me as odd that at this particular time Google decides it no longer wants to play ball with the Chinese govt. I suspect the e-mail hacks have gone on for years, if they haven't, I'd be very surprised. So why now, is fascinating.
I think Frank's point:

1.      A quick deflationary note:  If I were running a general purpose search engine with a ~33% market share (as Google does in China), facing a competitor with a ~60+% market share (like Baidu), I'd seriously consider exiting the market.  We've now reached a point at which dominance in general purpose search is self-reinforcing.*

The only other possibility that strikes me is that somehow the hacking is actually getting to the search engine algorithms.
Whatever the reason, coming from Google it is hard to believe it is not founded deeply in a business rationale


k   e   n        a   n   d   e   r   s   o   n
People and Practices Research
Intel Labs
503 456 1522

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/attachments/20100113/c3e8f412/attachment-0001.htm