Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Search Engine for the China Battleground : Google and... Microsoft

It's the most interesting chinese news I saw on the subject since I monitor the Asian's market.
The online search business is also a political business. China's Internet is closely monitored, and without close Chinese government supervision, Google can easily become the hostess leading Chinese web surfers into dens of sin. This is why services like Google's web caching feature have been fuwu non grata in China for at least two years. And this is why it is important for Google to have great public relations professionals on the ground in China working with the Ministry of Information Industry, the Internet Society of China, and the National Public Security Bureau. Google can't wine and dine Chinese officials if it stays on its California campus.


This is one of the many good paragraphs of that story by Perry Wu who seem to me very one of the best article in the Chinese publishing in this first short history of SE information. Hope will see more story by this guy, -- while I don't agree with his conclusion of the article -- !

1 comment:

Martin Lessard said...

At one point Wu says :

"But do you know who will be the ultimate winner in China and around the world? Microsoft."

Talking about the new Windows (Vista) he adds :

"Those that did use Google's services before the upgrade, may not need them again. And around the world, many new Vista users will also keep the de facto Microsoft system in place and not download any of Google's services."

Hence his conclusion : "But think about the other 99.9% of the world that is just happy to turn their computers on each day and have their MSN instant messaging software start automatically." Microsoft will win de facto.

Uh! Did I miss something? Isn't Microsoft already the OS world leader? Is that stopping people using Google? Is Vista so evil (or so good) to hide me Google goodness?

I'm wondering how come his prediction (which is exactly what is happening right now) will lead to radically different situation...

PS: By the way, I'm putting myself on the wrong side of the law by using excerpt from the post as ChinaTechNews.com stricly keep all right for the text : "No part of this website may be copied, transferred, posted, or published without the express written permission of ChinaTechNews.com or its registered agents. (...) Failure to comply with these rules will result in legal action."

Oh my, my...