The real reason Google wants out of China

14. i dont know that china kicked google out. the fact was google only had about 15% of the market share, so their getting kicked out was irrelevant to most chinese people, but youll never hear this from the liberal media. what else you wont hear is also that google doesnt do well in many asian countries. it has 3% market share in korea. 26% hong kong, 38% japan, 18% taiwan. the fact of the matter is google might be good for roman letter searches, but in terms of asian characters, google is rubbish.

13. what a surprise for a canadian (51st state) human rights activist to make no mention of the u.s. support for israel, various dicators, killing 1 million iraqis, 4 million iraqi refugees, guantanamo bay, abu ghraib, u.s. attempt to turn the haiti disaster into an imperialistic opportunity, and the espionage of the nsa, not to mention that all passengers flying into the european union get the privalege of getting their email and credit card accounts snooped through by the u.s. govt.

12. Your article made sense up until you started associating Copyright Violation with Theft, turning it into a pro-IP restriction propaganda.

Guess what, every country hasn't got the same culture, mentality and relation to ideas and the way they are used.

China is one of the rare countries who still has the leverage not to be subdued by western pressure on the way they should treat information and ideas, and that's something people should use as a base for reflection on our relationship with IP instead of turning into whiners about "theft" of immaterial "belongings" (more like government sponsored monopolies that used to be limited in time).

11. I agree with Oxblood and dtheas. I worked in China and Hong Kong. Hijacking was rampant, especially in Hong Kong. Every company I visited and work in had very strict rules on protecting the designs and code.

10. 'You will only sell one unit into China' is gospel truth, so many associates have fallen for that 'infinite market' pitch, at their own cost(!), heading to China to showcase their IP wares, only to see them for sale on Baidu a year later. One associate beat them at their game!! His contract requires them to build a secure compound and perimeter fence, staffed 100% with EU employees in the control room, with a high tech security vault for the controls and servers, and they went for it!! But he's providing a service, not a product, or rather, his product is improving a process, the Chinese workers out in the plant must be all undercover reverse engineers.

Bill Clinton granted China MFN as part of Clinton-Blair's 'Third Way' to globalization! Good job, men!

9. Rossmessiah says: "His point appears to be that the seriousness of the hacking attempts is besides the point, they merely provide the catalyst for Google's move, not their true reason."

OK, I'm coming round to Ruffin's point of view that the real reason Google pulled-out is not the attacks. It's more likely because of the damage their Chinese operation is doing to their image and reputation in the free world.

Google originally (said that they) went-into the Chinese searchengine operation on the basis that that the censorship issues would eventually go away. When that didn't happen (and anyone who knows the CCP's politics is aware that they would not give up the censorship at any cost) then Google were left with a hot potato on their hands.

That said, many governments engage in trade deals with the CCP under the same pretext, that trade and exchange of ideas will lead to liberalization. Truth is, it does the reverse. Trade only provides the cash to enforce the totalitarian regime.

8. all the companies that set up shop in China are robbed/cloned. The Chinese set up a clone business(in my case in the same business park!)then have an employee placed who steals all the information he/she can..and sends it to the factory down the road...the world needs a wakeup call...China intends to own all of us...and they are doing a pretty good job of it already.

7. No I tend to agree with the author.

Google throws its rattle out of the pram and leaves the park saying I am not playing with the other kids they are not playing fair.

Its like the little kid who goes to mammy and says 'johnny is making faces at me' and turns and smiles at little johnny when tick off arrives.

Google got two things from this. Exit from China, and publicity. Other companies use this tactic. Think M$ and its badly patched software. Everytime a bad exploit occurs they get a lot of air time in the press for it. Thats free publicity and no one to step up too take their place, yet.

Once a company has a rival in the hood these sort of tactics will not be used.

6. Anteaus: Um, you DO know that Oxblood isn't just a "writer", right? He has been a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow, perhaps the most infamous hacker collective in the world, for over a decade. I think it is fair to say that they (and by extension he) know exactly what the "cyber attacks" were, and how serious they were. His point appears to be that the seriousness of the hacking attempts is besides the point, they merely provide the catalyst for Google's move, not their true reason.

However, that being said, I would argue that what google's motivation for getting out of China is, is ALSO a moot point. The point is that they ARE getting out. Good for them. If only the rest of the world would follow their lead and stop doing business with China (and any other country that treats their people that badly).

5. What IS it with writers who have to find scurrilous alterior motives in everyone's actions?

The cyber-attacks are very real. And, very criminal.

How do I know? I had the opportunity to examine one such.

Why not just accept that Google has seen the truth of the situation, and acted appropriately?

4. Google is being silly. Up the security of their emails (which should of been done along time ago) and then get on with business.

This attack points out googles delay in applying and improving its email security. If I was google I wouldn't be boasting about it.

And why are they thinking about pulling out? 300m users in china use internet, revenues could potentially be huge. To pull out is commercially unthinkable.

Microsoft will stay in china because it can accept Chinas rules and culture. Google is just being fussy and trying to win some public support as if it's being heroic in some way.

I hope google's shares suffer because of google's idiotic comments and decsions.

3. Just a comment about Nexus1

Nexus1 - never going to be an Iphone better, it's made by HTC who don't get me wrong are a cracking smartphone maker (I have a Hero myself - love it) but they were never going to 'beat' the iphone as they don't 'do that sort of thing' they are more about the practical things such as making sure everything works well, applications that don't costs much (if at all) - that sort of thing.

But lets get this straight - did Google build it? No - they got HTC to do it and renamed it, so in fact its a new HTC phone with a different badge. And for a small(ish) company HTC arn't doing that bad in the big bad world of smartphones.

2. You know the funny thing is this whole Google fiasco has completely overshadowed something I think is a lot more significant for Googles revenues.

I'm pretty sure a few of the tech heads read this but it was only a matter of days before this situation unravelled that France said they wanted to tax Google's ad sense service to fund competitors.

France are doing something that will eat into Googles profits massively and it is likely to spread throughout Europe eventually.

Simply put here in Europe people view Google as a monopoly and I honestly think in the next few years the European Union will bring in laws to eat away at Google's market domination.

To make matters worse for years now Google have frantically tried to develop a second major income stream to fall back onto.

Google would have liked the Nexus One to be a real competitor to the iPhone and just as successful if not more successful but by that standard its been an overwhelming failure.

With China kicking Google out and Europe closing down on Google it's only a matter of time before Google's relevance wanes.

Of course they could always get that second revenue stream they are looking for but it seems like the last hope of a company that is on its way to the end. I doubt Google will be very relevant if at all in a decade.

Google have pressed their luck too hard I expect Google to become the next MySpace. Like Microsoft have shown with Bing with the right amount of muscle behind a product you can make huge inroads to the search engine market.

After all it doesn't matter which search engine you use the search results are likely to be same.

1. They've peaked - sell!!!

If not in revenue terms (like a rocket keeps ascending under it's own inertia even after the engines cut out) then at least in terms of their core business: putting internet eyeballs in front of search-engine results. Just look at the way they're diversifying away from the thing(s) they do well. Look, too, at how they've retreated from what should be their single biggest market ON THE PLANET, in population terms. While every other company is desperate to get into the chinese market - with it's massive annual growth figures, these guys are walking away. Madness.