4 ms·

Yahoo! is OK, but... Yandex and Baidu are not exactly recommended company for an organization that pretends to hold the Open Web's moral higher ground. They pra

by opinali 12y ago

Yahoo! is OK, but... Yandex and Baidu are not exactly recommended company for an organization that pretends to hold the Open Web's moral higher ground. They practice large-scale censorship, they are instruments of repressive regimes. How does that make any sense?

mbrubeck 12y ago
Note that Mozilla has had revenue arrangements with Yandex and Baidu previously. And Google doesn't exactly have clean hands in China itself.
- hackuser 12y ago
  > Note that Mozilla has had revenue arrangements with Yandex and Baidu previously. And Google doesn't exactly have clean hands in China itself. What did Google do in China? I remember them pulling out of China, declining to participate further in censorship there, and being attacked (hacked) by the Chinese government. What am I forgetting?
  - mbrubeck 12y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#China has a short summary. You're correct that since 2010 they've refused to assist with government censorship; I had been thinking of what came before that. I think you have a good point that today, Google is the better actor in China.
- opinali 12y ago
  As you mention with the Wikipedia ref, there was controversy with Google's early attempts to work in China. What happens here is that Google tried to do a "best-effort" service for Chinese users, with the assumption that partial service would be much better than no service (and certainly WAY better than what Chinese users get from their own web companies like Baidu, that not only enforce censorship but also report "bad users" to the government, actively help to spy on dissidents etc.--something Google never considered doing). The search UI would notify users that some results were excluded due to government-enforced restriction, which was at least transparent--and not unlike what Google has to do today in the EU with the "right to be forgotten" censorship. But this wasn't good enough for the PRC, their firewall would impose harsh punishment to users who tried to browse forbidden things; I don't remember details now but it was like: you try to search for certain words, you'd be cut off the internet and not only your IP but other people too. So in a later attempt, Google search tried to warn users in advance, with a customized Google Instant so the user could avoid submitting a "bad" query that could result in blocking. This idea didn't work because the firewall was quickly updated to crack down on it, and I think that was the last attempt, then Google desisted to fight this battle because any progress would clearly require too much compromising, more than could be justified by an attempt to provide a pragmatic, partial service. [Disclaimer: Googler, but not especially intimate with the events above; none of this is internal info either, it's all widely reported stuff.]
inikulin 12y ago
I'm completely against current behavior of the russian government and I use Google on daily basis. However, I can't see how Yandex should be considered to be the company "that practice large-scale censorship, they are instruments of repressive regimes"? This is a great company, which contributes both to open source and science (numerous collaborations with CERN, etc.). And it really tries to fight for the web freedom here in Russia, which involves a huge risk for their business. Speaking of censorship: I'm often see message regarding DMCA in Google search results, nearly never seen them in Yandex.
- Grue3 12y ago
  Because Yandex is based in Russia, it has no alternative but to share its data with the government. If you value your privacy, avoid using any Russian-based search engines or social networks if you live in Russia.
  - yellowapple 12y ago
    Did you mean Yandex? Yahoo! is based in California.
  - inikulin 12y ago
    > If you value your privacy, avoid using any Russian-based search engines or social networks if you live in Russia Pushing this forward, if you so much value your privacy you should not use any service which has official representatives (official company behind it), because in many countries they should provide user data on goverment requests (e.g. http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/RU/ http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/RU...). This is a disturbing fact, but this is how modern society works. You should throw out the window all your electronic devices and move somethere to the North Pole to protect your privacy (and I can't guarantee that satellite will not watching you). "Privacy" nowadays is just a huge illusion which is an euphemism for the statement: "Somehow, you can be sure they will not come for you for what you doing. For now...".

by opinali 12y ago

mbrubeck 12y ago

Note that Mozilla has had revenue arrangements with Yandex and Baidu previously. And Google doesn't exactly have clean hands in China itself.

hackuser 12y ago
> Note that Mozilla has had revenue arrangements with Yandex and Baidu previously. And Google doesn't exactly have clean hands in China itself. What did Google do in China? I remember them pulling out of China, declining to participate further in censorship there, and being attacked (hacked) by the Chinese government. What am I forgetting?
- mbrubeck 12y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#China has a short summary. You're correct that since 2010 they've refused to assist with government censorship; I had been thinking of what came before that. I think you have a good point that today, Google is the better actor in China.
opinali 12y ago
As you mention with the Wikipedia ref, there was controversy with Google's early attempts to work in China. What happens here is that Google tried to do a "best-effort" service for Chinese users, with the assumption that partial service would be much better than no service (and certainly WAY better than what Chinese users get from their own web companies like Baidu, that not only enforce censorship but also report "bad users" to the government, actively help to spy on dissidents etc.--something Google never considered doing). The search UI would notify users that some results were excluded due to government-enforced restriction, which was at least transparent--and not unlike what Google has to do today in the EU with the "right to be forgotten" censorship. But this wasn't good enough for the PRC, their firewall would impose harsh punishment to users who tried to browse forbidden things; I don't remember details now but it was like: you try to search for certain words, you'd be cut off the internet and not only your IP but other people too. So in a later attempt, Google search tried to warn users in advance, with a customized Google Instant so the user could avoid submitting a "bad" query that could result in blocking. This idea didn't work because the firewall was quickly updated to crack down on it, and I think that was the last attempt, then Google desisted to fight this battle because any progress would clearly require too much compromising, more than could be justified by an attempt to provide a pragmatic, partial service. [Disclaimer: Googler, but not especially intimate with the events above; none of this is internal info either, it's all widely reported stuff.]

inikulin 12y ago

I'm completely against current behavior of the russian government and I use Google on daily basis. However, I can't see how Yandex should be considered to be the company "that practice large-scale censorship, they are instruments of repressive regimes"? This is a great company, which contributes both to open source and science (numerous collaborations with CERN, etc.). And it really tries to fight for the web freedom here in Russia, which involves a huge risk for their business. Speaking of censorship: I'm often see message regarding DMCA in Google search results, nearly never seen them in Yandex.

Grue3 12y ago
Because Yandex is based in Russia, it has no alternative but to share its data with the government. If you value your privacy, avoid using any Russian-based search engines or social networks if you live in Russia.
- yellowapple 12y ago
  Did you mean Yandex? Yahoo! is based in California.
- inikulin 12y ago
  > If you value your privacy, avoid using any Russian-based search engines or social networks if you live in Russia Pushing this forward, if you so much value your privacy you should not use any service which has official representatives (official company behind it), because in many countries they should provide user data on goverment requests (e.g. http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/RU/ http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/RU...). This is a disturbing fact, but this is how modern society works. You should throw out the window all your electronic devices and move somethere to the North Pole to protect your privacy (and I can't guarantee that satellite will not watching you). "Privacy" nowadays is just a huge illusion which is an euphemism for the statement: "Somehow, you can be sure they will not come for you for what you doing. For now...".