4 ms·

Google left China because it discovered it was the victim of a cyberattack from the Chinese government, not really out of any kind of hate of authoritarianism.

by ENOTTY 5y ago

Google left China because it discovered it was the victim of a cyberattack from the Chinese government, not really out of any kind of hate of authoritarianism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora And they returned to the Chinese market several years later.

cromwellian 5y ago
1) No, that is not the reason they left. Google can serve searches from anywhere, including putting servers in HK or Taiwan, or a datacenter in Japan. Leaving the Chinese market doesn't inhibit Chinese cyberattacks. In recent years, Google revealed the Chinese government had been targeting overseas Chinese civil rights activist accounts with spearfishing attacks. More likely, they did not want to be on the hook for constantly censoring search results. If you run any forum or search engine in China, you have to be on the hook for constantly responding to requests to either censor search/forums or turn over user data, and who wants to be involved in that? 2) "And they returned to the Chinese market several years later." No, they did not. You cannot reliably access gmail, youtube, search, et al, from Mainland China without a VPN, and even with a VPN it's iffy since VPNs constantly stop working. Maybe you're confusing the recent project Dragonfly that was being worked on. It never shipped. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) Google's decision to leave China was most likely heavily influenced by Brin, who having grown up under the Iron Curtain, despises totalitarianism and probably didn't want to deal with the CCP. Apple made a decision that they love money more than privacy or civil rights, and haven't seemed to invest any of their hundreds of billions in decoupling themselves from Chinese manufacturing and assembly, so as a result, they are now beholden to the whims of the CCP. A real Faustian bargain on their part that they may one day regret.

by ENOTTY 5y ago

cromwellian 5y ago

1) No, that is not the reason they left. Google can serve searches from anywhere, including putting servers in HK or Taiwan, or a datacenter in Japan. Leaving the Chinese market doesn't inhibit Chinese cyberattacks. In recent years, Google revealed the Chinese government had been targeting overseas Chinese civil rights activist accounts with spearfishing attacks. More likely, they did not want to be on the hook for constantly censoring search results. If you run any forum or search engine in China, you have to be on the hook for constantly responding to requests to either censor search/forums or turn over user data, and who wants to be involved in that? 2) "And they returned to the Chinese market several years later." No, they did not. You cannot reliably access gmail, youtube, search, et al, from Mainland China without a VPN, and even with a VPN it's iffy since VPNs constantly stop working. Maybe you're confusing the recent project Dragonfly that was being worked on. It never shipped. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) Google's decision to leave China was most likely heavily influenced by Brin, who having grown up under the Iron Curtain, despises totalitarianism and probably didn't want to deal with the CCP. Apple made a decision that they love money more than privacy or civil rights, and haven't seemed to invest any of their hundreds of billions in decoupling themselves from Chinese manufacturing and assembly, so as a result, they are now beholden to the whims of the CCP. A real Faustian bargain on their part that they may one day regret.