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They could always do what Google did and abandon China.
by tziki 9y ago
They could always do what Google did and abandon China.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoGoogle was aspirational in China when it left: they weren't making much money there...they hoped to in the future. Apple is not aspirational in China today: they are already making a lot of money there. Leaving China would cause an immediate shock to its stock price as well as a huge cut in actual profits.
- smichel17 9y ago...the profit motive makes it okay! /s
- rayuela 9y agoThe profit means Cook keeps his job
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoIt means that either Cook is CEO of Apple, or he isn't. Either way, Apple will still be in China.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- KMag 9y ago> Google was aspirational in China when it left: they weren't making much money there...they hoped to in the future. I was an engineer on Google's web search indexing system for 4 years (including the Aurora attack), leaving shortly before Google's China exit. I listened to several talks by the head of Google China, who came from Baidu. Even before the Aurora attack, as a matter of national pride, we knew the very best Google could hope for was 30% or 40% market share in China. Even France funded one or two attempts at a Francophone Google killer. I can't imagine the U.S. looking at a dominant search company based out of anywhere except North America (or perhaps the Anglophone Five Eyes) and not butting up significant nationalistic barriers. Google was hoping to make profits, but they knew they would never be dominant. This made their exit much easier. If Google was serious about China, they would have had a more obscure non-Google-branded name for their Chinese joint venture and would have branded their front page much differently. The reasons would take a large post, but Chinese web pages tend to be much more "busy", and Chinese language searches have a much higher percentage of "navigational searches". (If you search for [Facebook], you're almost certainly just trying to just get a link to facebook.com, and are basically using the search engine like a bookmark page.) I understand Google's need for a consistent U.I., but they really should have had a non-Google-branded U.I. that was better suited to the Chinese market.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoWhen you say "Chinese market" you mean mainland Chinese market. Google does just fine in Hong Kong and Taiwan, while Baidu is completely MIA outside of mainland China even in markets with significant Chinese populations.
- shalmanese 9y agoThe Baidu front page today basically looks like the Google front page.
- joecool1029 9y agoNah, they really can't. Apple's margins depend on Chinese labor to build their hardware. The two companies are very different.
- choko 9y agoMarket size and profit aren't an acceptable excuse for hypocrisy.
- chii 9y agoi think you'll find that in the real world, those are almost always used as excuses, and the money makes it acceptable.
- idlewords 9y agoThat's an Apple business decision.
- 19890903 9y ago100% agree. Their business, their rules.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y agoAnd our prerogative to judge them when they behave unethically.
- xienze 9y agoThey could stop operating in Saudi Arabia to show their support for gay rights. But again, there's money to be made. Much easier to just slam Trump or whoever.
- veridies 9y agoSaudi Arabia isn't demanding they cripple their products, so selling their products in Saudi Arabia isn't ethically fraught. And Apple isn't spending their time slamming Trump. They're a tech company, not a politician.
- gareim 9y agoGoogle ended up losing the entire Chinese market to Baidu, who are going to end up being a global competitor, and the general population didn't even care that Google left. Apple learned from this that you could be a big deal in the West, but a nobody in the East.
- imron 9y agoTo be fair, they'd more or less already lost the entire Chinese market to Baidu before they left anyway (they had ~15% marketshare or something).
- fma 9y agoAnecdote...my Chinese friends have said Google was poor for Chinese language searches. Might explain the 15% market share.
- 1_2__4 9y agoGoogle lost nothing. China never had any intention of allowing Google to become dominant in China. That was apparent from day one and comports perfectly with their explicitly stated and demonstrated agenda.
- ethbro 9y agoAgreed. When the explicit goal of arbitrarily changed rules are "We'll screw you in favor of a local competitor", why would you choose to play? Either you are successful, and then the rules are changed to disadvantage you further. Or you're unsuccessful because of the rules. Lose / lose.
- jonny_eh 9y agoOr you lose because you lose fair and square. But you're right, either way you can't win.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- natch 9y agoGoogle's phones aren't made in China? And is Google Play not in China? With Google I always wonder where the PR ends and the reality begins.
- Zhenya 9y agoGoogle Play is not in China. Their phones are made many places. Lately in Taiwan and Korea.
- jhedwards 9y agoThis is something I never understood. Google has this "do no evil" value and because staying in China involved compromising this value they left. The result is that the Chinese people are short one search engine as well as _any_ good that Google could have done. This seems ultimately more evil to me. It's good for Google because they can say they upheld their values, and it's good for the Chinese government because now they have one less external factor to manage in their control of information. Perhaps there is more to this picture than I am seeing but that has always been my view. There's an ancient Chinese story where a farmer criticizes an official who exiled himself because the government is corrupt. As the fisherman departs he sings: "when the water of the river is clean I wash my hat in the river, when the waters are dirty I wash my feet in the river". What good can the virtuous official do living out in the mountains? Instead you should adapt your participation to the conditions of the playing field.
- CountSessine 9y agoIt's good for Google because they can say they upheld their values, and it's good for the Chinese government because now they have one less external factor to manage in their control of information. Perhaps there is more to this picture than I am seeing but that has always been my view I don't see how they could have stayed in China and not been involved in things that are truly evil. When the government phones you up and tells you to hide search results related to babies dying from diluted baby formula (yes, this happened), could you in good conscience tell one of your engineers to add that filter? How could a company like Google possibly retain good people when they have to ask them to do the bidding of such an evil government?
- jhedwards 9y agoYes I agree, this is an angle that actually came to my mind after posting my original comment. At the end of the day there had to be Google engineers in China doing the job, real people actually implementing censorship. So if Google being in China meant that employees had to be involved in inhumane acts, I'm not surprised they would leave.
- Infinitesimus 9y ago