[LINK] Chinese swiped Googles Sourcecode - Was - A story about Christmas

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Kim Holburn
> Sent: Wednesday, 28 December 2011 12:17 AM
> To: Link list
> Subject: Re: [LINK] A Story About Christmas or The new 
> Spreading Meme,"The Apparent Lack of Christmas".
> 
> 
> I was reading an article related to some of the things in 
> your blog: 
> http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/12/26/1431248/i-device-manu
> facturing-unprofitable-to-china
> 
> Which talks about how the manufacturing component of Apple 
> devices is small compared with the profit to Apple.  An 
> interesting discussion in itself.
> 
> In the comments are a number of interesting side discussions 
> including this link:
> 
> http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/china_trade_policy_and_
> the_fallacy_of_idea-land.html
> 
> There was an interesting example of the way China deals with facebook:
> > Facebook is a classic example of China's non-tariff trade 
> barriers at 
> > work.  The Social Network is illegal in China, and its website is 
> > blocked as part of China's social repression system.  Yet, Beijing 
> > actively supports the growth of its Chinese competitor 
> Renren, which 
> > just had a successful IPO on the NYSE.  While Facebook's 
> idea has no 
> > access to the Chinese market, American capital pours into a 
> firm that 
> > stole it!

Err, RenRen and QQ were about six years in advance of Facebook [circa
1998], so can’t quite see how they stole the Facebook idea...

> 
> But the kicker for me was this snippet near the end:
> > Google tried to play China's game but was burned.  Beijing 
> directed it 
> > to censor offensive search results like "Chinese 
> democracy."  Though 
> > originally compliant, the California firm was continually 
> > disadvantaged by induced disruptions to its Chinese 
> network, a blatant 
> > public preference for its Chinese competitor, and hassles over its 
> > internet "license."  In order to avoid the trap Beijing 
> laid for Yahoo 
> > -- demanding dissidents' emails and info -- Google disabled 
> services 
> > such as gmail.  Its YouTube service was completely blocked.  China 
> > eventually requested that Google also censor 
> "objectionable" Chinese 
> > material from its U.S.-based site.  In 2009 Google discovered that 
> > Chinese agents had hacked their systems -- along with more than 200 
> > other U.S. firms -- and swiped their cherished source code. 
>  So much 
> > for the advantage of ideas.
> 

I find this one hard to swallow. Having been involved in several
start-ups involving software code, the code is always B1 secure with no
uncompiled elements anywhere near a network connection. For Google to
ignore such a basic rule speaks volumes about their lack of security.

> I don't remember hearing before that "Chinese agents had ... 
> swiped Google's cherished source code".  Did I miss something?
> 

Yep, you missed the Spin Truism. 

Earlier this year we discussed that Robert Li had developed the Peer
Group reference concept before Larry Pages' "Page Rank" and before him
was Coopers work on document value based on reference source and access
numbers circa 1972-1977.

I had occasion this year to present to industry leaders the real story
behind the Google exit from China. It had very little do with being
hacked and a lot more to do with the fact that the Google Android
experiment backfired on Google. Robin Li convinced all good "patriotic"
phone manufactures to include the Baidu Search Icon on the front screen
of every Android powered Clone phone.
With 16 million arm chips shipped daily, ten million of those are placed
into Chinese phones.
At that rate, it doesn’t take long to overturn Google's dominance on a
global scale in the emerging nations, i.e.: Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt
etc. by offering phones for sale under USD $100.00 when each one of
those phones uses Baidu as it's default search engine.

In fact even Sears this year were selling an Android powered iPhone 4
look-alike until Apple screamed foul. (See PowerPoint File in
References)

It would be a shame to accelerate international tension on the basis of
furphy told merely to save face in front of a few shareholders.


The reality is:
The technology of the two search engines is considerably divorced.

Chinese writing is pictograph based and the Google search engine (Arabic
ASCII based) was unable to compete with the generational or regional
meaning of the differences in presenting each character.

Baidu is written based on the Chinese character style, it is therefore
capable of searching for emotive, generational and regional meaning in
addition to the "apparent" meaning of the character.

There is no comparison in the two search engines. For Google to even
consider that the world would believe their claim is naïve and
diplomatically potentially destructive. Politicians are not students of
anthropological graphology and probably have no understanding of the
essential base differences in the Search engines. 

The reality of this bunfight comes down to who has access to the search
data. If it turns out that it is the information agencies of both
superpowers who are the funding agents, then the sabre rattling has the
potential to escalate and needs to be dampened before that possibility
can occur.

At the end of the day, do we care more for Google's share price or world
peace ?

As I said at the beginning, it's all about the spin.


TomK


Reference:
http://kovtr.com/data/Link/PubllishingGooglevsBaidu.pps (File has had
commercial-in-content elements removed - so my apologies if continuity
appears to be lacking). 

Important Disclaimer: I have no interests in China either Financial or
otherwise. All of my comments and research on this topic are on a
totally non-partisan basis.