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Google 2010: What Makes the Muskrat Guard His Musk

10 points by rfreytag 17y ago

fh 17y ago
Google says that they will do the right thing (in their opinion) and stop collaborating with the Chinese regime, and your first comment to that is about the lost opportunity for profit. I'm shocked. Now, I agree that Google probably does this for rather selfish reasons, abandoning a market that's not profitable to them anyway in a PR effective way. However, I wonder: Is there no room in American capitalism for consideration of the morality of helping evil governments oppress their people? Is this not a discussion we should have had years ago?
sethg 17y ago
Google is going to have zero impact on China — zero — by abandoning that market What influence over China do they have now?
po 17y ago
The satellite angle he proposes at the end of the article is interesting but the dishes are one-way. Rooftop dishes don't broadcast up to the satellite. A request is made through a phone line and the content is then sent down to all dishes. Your dish then decodes the part that was meant for you. It works because the bandwidth of satellite broadcast is so fat, it can support the average of all of the customers at once. China would not allow the uplink. Unless there is some new technology I'm not aware of, it won't work.
- arghnoname 17y ago
  I'm pretty sure that what you are saying is true with regard to satellite Internet, and I had the same thought you did in reading that point. I do wonder though, how do sat-phones work?
  - po 17y ago
    Those actually do broadcast back up to the satellite with a radio. I think the bandwidth is extremely limited though. Prices would probably be around $5 per megabyte. Nothing the average chinese would be able to afford, and there's no way Google would be able to recoup that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access#Portable_satellite_modem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access#Porta...
    - arghnoname 17y ago
      Ah thanks, that's interesting. Before I saw a sat phone, I thought power draw would be too much of an issue, but obviously it works. I suppose you could beam in static versions of wikipedia, chinese language information, etc, easily enough via satellite or terrestrial sources, like radio free Europe. As a publicly traded corporation, if Google started putting money into a venture without any hope for revenue to antagonize a major world power, the shareholders would likely object.
      - po 17y ago
        Oh, here's an idea: I was at a tech party here in Tokyo recently saw a device that was simply a wikipedia gadget. Just an LCD screen and a keyboard for searching. They said that as a user you were entitled to two updates a year. As a someone who already has an iPhone with access to wikipedia I didn't see the point of it, but if you put the Chinese version of wikipedia and a satellite receiver into it…
rfreytag 17y ago
Now everyone in China, the fastest growing market, knows that if they can get to Google (and they can) then their results will be honest. Shrewed public move into a niche no established China search engine can fill. Ethics pays.

10 points by rfreytag 17y ago

fh 17y ago

Google says that they will do the right thing (in their opinion) and stop collaborating with the Chinese regime, and your first comment to that is about the lost opportunity for profit. I'm shocked. Now, I agree that Google probably does this for rather selfish reasons, abandoning a market that's not profitable to them anyway in a PR effective way. However, I wonder: Is there no room in American capitalism for consideration of the morality of helping evil governments oppress their people? Is this not a discussion we should have had years ago?

sethg 17y ago

Google is going to have zero impact on China — zero — by abandoning that market What influence over China do they have now?

po 17y ago

The satellite angle he proposes at the end of the article is interesting but the dishes are one-way. Rooftop dishes don't broadcast up to the satellite. A request is made through a phone line and the content is then sent down to all dishes. Your dish then decodes the part that was meant for you. It works because the bandwidth of satellite broadcast is so fat, it can support the average of all of the customers at once. China would not allow the uplink. Unless there is some new technology I'm not aware of, it won't work.

arghnoname 17y ago
I'm pretty sure that what you are saying is true with regard to satellite Internet, and I had the same thought you did in reading that point. I do wonder though, how do sat-phones work?
- po 17y ago
  Those actually do broadcast back up to the satellite with a radio. I think the bandwidth is extremely limited though. Prices would probably be around $5 per megabyte. Nothing the average chinese would be able to afford, and there's no way Google would be able to recoup that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access#Portable_satellite_modem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access#Porta...
  - arghnoname 17y ago
    Ah thanks, that's interesting. Before I saw a sat phone, I thought power draw would be too much of an issue, but obviously it works. I suppose you could beam in static versions of wikipedia, chinese language information, etc, easily enough via satellite or terrestrial sources, like radio free Europe. As a publicly traded corporation, if Google started putting money into a venture without any hope for revenue to antagonize a major world power, the shareholders would likely object.
    - po 17y ago
      Oh, here's an idea: I was at a tech party here in Tokyo recently saw a device that was simply a wikipedia gadget. Just an LCD screen and a keyboard for searching. They said that as a user you were entitled to two updates a year. As a someone who already has an iPhone with access to wikipedia I didn't see the point of it, but if you put the Chinese version of wikipedia and a satellite receiver into it…

rfreytag 17y ago

Now everyone in China, the fastest growing market, knows that if they can get to Google (and they can) then their results will be honest. Shrewed public move into a niche no established China search engine can fill. Ethics pays.