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I had the same views as many people here before. That Google returning to China is abandoning its principles. But seeing how my friends and family suffer with B

I had the same views as many people here before. That Google returning to China is abandoning its principles. But seeing how my friends and family suffer with Baidu, I wonder, what exactly "Do no evil" by not cooperating with Chinese government is good for? It does not in any way boost human rights or freedom in China, and the only tangible result is that ordinary Chinese citizens are suffering even more because of lack of access to a better search engine. Exiting China does more "evil" than returning to it, at least from a utilitarian perspective.

xiaoma 11y ago
Could you elaborate on how they suffer with Baidu? I've found it to be top-notch and better than Google for the normal searches made in China. I generally make it my default while there even when using a VPN.
- colordrops 11y ago
  They don't use an algorithm similar to page rank. Results are much more biased towards special interests than google.
  - jhancock 11y ago
    Here's one long running anecdote. I've been operating a self-published book site for over five years. All Chinese content. Some of the books are banned in China. Much of the content no China online publisher will touch. Baidu loves my site. Searches are often in the top three results on Baidu. I have no ads and pay Baidu nothing. Don't even help them find my site. Baidu even runs its own book site and gives my site plenty of love. To my knowledge the site has never been blocked by the GFW. Google barely knows I exist even though I follow all their webmaster rules. I'm not sure if its because of low page rank or Google not being great at Chinese content. I suppose my point is page rank isn't the only way to go or at least having a strong reliance on page rank may leave out unique or rare content that isn't marketed (quality inbound links) heavily.
  - argonaut 11y ago
    Google doesn't use Page Rank any more either. Of course, they analyze links, but it's not the Page Rank algorithm any more.
  - xiaoma 11y ago
    That's not true. Robin Li, the co-founder of Baidu, obtained a patent for hypertext link analysis before Larry Page obtained his “Page Rank” version.
- olalonde 11y ago
  As a foreigner living in China and who can't read Chinese, Baidu is close to useless. There's always Bing but Google gives much superior results for the types of searches I do. That being said, the vast majority of Chinese don't "suffer" from Baidu and wouldn't switch to Google if it came back.
lukeschlather 11y ago
You're assuming that Baidu's faults are somehow because the people running Baidu are simply not as skilled as Google, and I doubt this. If Google was running in China, I doubt it would be that much better than Baidu. The censorship obviously degrades the quality of search results, and China does other things which make running web services intrinsically difficult, especially if you're trying to keep to Western principles in any way.
realusername 11y ago
The chinese governement will have to change their policies at some point anyway. Having the great firewall is as a side-effect hurting a lot the tech companies, no-one is actualy outsourcing tech to China. If you compare with India, the difference is massive. I can only think of one chinese tech company who succeeded internationally (AppAnnie), all the others I can think of are just copies of tech companies for the local market. At some point, they will have to choose between having great technology companies and keeping the firewall in place. The more they wait, the harder the choice is going to be for them.
- DasIch 11y ago
  China has amazing technology companies though, a fairly unique market when it comes to how the internet is used and a market that is so ridiculously large that any company just operating in China can do very well. Just take a look at WeChat which is practically replacing the Web in China. They are clearly years ahead of Facebook. The chinese government may have to change policies at some point but there is no reason to believe that this is something that has to happen anytime soon, certainly not within the next few years, probably not even within a decade.
- netheril96 11y ago
  I am pessimistic about this. The NSA fiasco hurts the interests of many American tech businesses, especially those operating a cloud, but you don't see any signs of US government changing their mind on surveillance. At least in the United States, money can influence politics. Yet the tech companies fail to change anything. In China, the power is inverted: politics control money. If censorship is good for the party but bad for business, then business just have to work with that.

xiaoma 11y ago

Could you elaborate on how they suffer with Baidu? I've found it to be top-notch and better than Google for the normal searches made in China. I generally make it my default while there even when using a VPN.

colordrops 11y ago
They don't use an algorithm similar to page rank. Results are much more biased towards special interests than google.
- jhancock 11y ago
  Here's one long running anecdote. I've been operating a self-published book site for over five years. All Chinese content. Some of the books are banned in China. Much of the content no China online publisher will touch. Baidu loves my site. Searches are often in the top three results on Baidu. I have no ads and pay Baidu nothing. Don't even help them find my site. Baidu even runs its own book site and gives my site plenty of love. To my knowledge the site has never been blocked by the GFW. Google barely knows I exist even though I follow all their webmaster rules. I'm not sure if its because of low page rank or Google not being great at Chinese content. I suppose my point is page rank isn't the only way to go or at least having a strong reliance on page rank may leave out unique or rare content that isn't marketed (quality inbound links) heavily.
- argonaut 11y ago
  Google doesn't use Page Rank any more either. Of course, they analyze links, but it's not the Page Rank algorithm any more.
- xiaoma 11y ago
  That's not true. Robin Li, the co-founder of Baidu, obtained a patent for hypertext link analysis before Larry Page obtained his “Page Rank” version.
olalonde 11y ago
As a foreigner living in China and who can't read Chinese, Baidu is close to useless. There's always Bing but Google gives much superior results for the types of searches I do. That being said, the vast majority of Chinese don't "suffer" from Baidu and wouldn't switch to Google if it came back.

lukeschlather 11y ago

You're assuming that Baidu's faults are somehow because the people running Baidu are simply not as skilled as Google, and I doubt this. If Google was running in China, I doubt it would be that much better than Baidu. The censorship obviously degrades the quality of search results, and China does other things which make running web services intrinsically difficult, especially if you're trying to keep to Western principles in any way.

realusername 11y ago

The chinese governement will have to change their policies at some point anyway. Having the great firewall is as a side-effect hurting a lot the tech companies, no-one is actualy outsourcing tech to China. If you compare with India, the difference is massive. I can only think of one chinese tech company who succeeded internationally (AppAnnie), all the others I can think of are just copies of tech companies for the local market. At some point, they will have to choose between having great technology companies and keeping the firewall in place. The more they wait, the harder the choice is going to be for them.

DasIch 11y ago
China has amazing technology companies though, a fairly unique market when it comes to how the internet is used and a market that is so ridiculously large that any company just operating in China can do very well. Just take a look at WeChat which is practically replacing the Web in China. They are clearly years ahead of Facebook. The chinese government may have to change policies at some point but there is no reason to believe that this is something that has to happen anytime soon, certainly not within the next few years, probably not even within a decade.
netheril96 11y ago
I am pessimistic about this. The NSA fiasco hurts the interests of many American tech businesses, especially those operating a cloud, but you don't see any signs of US government changing their mind on surveillance. At least in the United States, money can influence politics. Yet the tech companies fail to change anything. In China, the power is inverted: politics control money. If censorship is good for the party but bad for business, then business just have to work with that.