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Google is 99.9% Sure it's Pulling Out of China

Justin Kerr — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:48:10 -0500

Last week we reported that Google's China talks may soon be coming to a close, and CEO Eric Schmidt even hinted to reporters at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit that "something would be happening soon". Well, if you believe the Financial Times, Google is about 99.9% sure it is going to pull the plug on China. Wired.com attempted to contact a Google spokesman for a comment, however they would neither confirm or deny the report. According to the Times, Google has drawn up a detailed plans for how it will exit the Chinese market, and is poised to execute.

If Google does pull out of China, the action plan is no doubt intended to protect local employees from retaliation by authorities. It is still unknown if they intend to push ahead with their plans to un-filter Google.cn, but Chinese authorities made a very stern and public warning to the company on Friday. "If you don't respect Chinese laws, you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and the consequences will be on you," said China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Li Yizhong.

According to the Financial Times Google is exploring every option to keep its Chinese businesses afloat, but is wary of the backlash from authorities which may make this all but impossible. "It's very important to know we are not pulling out of China," Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, told the Financial Times at the time. "We have a good business in China. This is about the censorship rules, not anything else."

Microsoft Builds Financial Data into Bing

Bart Salisbury — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:34:19 -0600

There’s a ton of money to be made with a search engine these days. The seriousness of the market, which is starting to show signs of new competition, is underscored by the recent spate of feature enhancements. Yesterday, it was Google adding social networking hooks. Today, it is Microsoft adding financial data to Bing.

The Bing team has decided that one thing that will help to simplify our day, other than a recipe for chicken marengo, is investment data. In particular, reports for U.S. stocks and funds. According to the Bing Community Blog, all you need do is “enter a ticker in the search box e.g MSFT. Note our "Instant Answer" on top which provides basic data about the firm. If you click on the "Investor Data" tab on the left you go into our finance page.”

And, sure enough, checking out a few company ticker symbols, Bing dutifully reports stock results at/near the top of the search results. (It will appear under sponsored sites, if there are any.)

This addition to Bing already exists on Yahoo!, and, albeit a bit hit-and-miss, on Google. While this will make life “easier” for Bing users, whether it is enough to differentiate Bing from the search engine crowd and attract new users is an open question.

Image Credit: Microsoft

Google Adds More Social Features to Search Results

Bart Salisbury — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:21:24 -0600

Google has been quietly working a Social Search experiment for the past year. Google’s interest is in making search results more personal by providing relevant web content from friends and online contacts. The experiment seems to be going well, as Google has just announced the availability of Social Search to all, in beta form.

Google hopes, besides you making more use of its search engine, that the Social Search will offer greater confidence in search results. Rather than rely on the “kindness of strangers”, you can get feedback from people you know and trust. You’re doing it now on Facebook and Twitter, so why not do it on Google as well?

For Social Search to work in a meaningful way, you’re going to have to disclose more of yourself to Google. Google says creating/updating your Google profile is a first step. There you can add links to your other public online social services. Google allows options for managing your Social Search network, including adding and deleting members.

Social Search is being rolled out for all signed-in users. Google says it may take a few days before you see the change.

Image Credit: Google

Chinese Media Takes on Anti-Google Sentiment

Paul Lilly — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:54:48 -0600

China has denied any involvement with the recent cyberattacks that targeted Google and about 35 other large U.S. corporations, but when it comes to the country's media, China's more than willing to openly go on the offensive.

"It is not difficult to see the shadow of the U.S. government behind the politicization of the Google affair," Communist newspaper, People's Daily, wrote partially in response to Hillary Clinton's defense of Google threatening to shut down service in China. The paper added that American politicians are using Google "in an effort to restrict China's right to protect its national security and interests on the Internet."

These comments come despite the fact that Google continues to filter out content the Chinese government deems "sensitive" and has asked to talk to China about the situation. Naturally, this can only mean one thing:

"Perhaps Google has already realized that China can do without Google, but without China, Google does not have a future," the paper added.

China Denies any Involvement in the Cyberattacks on Google

Justin Kerr — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:14:18 -0600

When Google announced that it might be pulling out of China as a result of recent cyberattacks, everyone assumed the Chinese Government was involved in the breach. After all, pulling the plug on the largest customer base of Internet users in the world couldn't have been an easy decision to make, and would have been a bit of an overreaction if the evidence was pointing to a private individual or company. With this in mind however, its important to note that Google hasn't officially implicated the Chinese government in the attacks, and that rumor now stands in stark contrast to a statement issued today by Chinese officials.

The "accusation that the Chinese government participated in (any) cyberattack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China," an unidentified ministry spokesman told Xinhua, according to an Agence France Presse report. "The U.S. has criticized China's policies to administer the Internet and insinuated that China restricts Internet freedom...This runs contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-U.S. relations," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

The harsh words quoted above out of Beijing are one of the first public reactions to Hillary Clintons recent lecture on Internet freedom. In her speech Clinton criticized Chinas efforts to censor the country's 384 million web users which she claims are trapped behind "The Great Firewall of China". Clearly the Chinese government was not amused. Google hasn't stopped censoring the results on Google.cn just yet, but CEO Eric Schmidt said on Thursday that it would happen soon.

So is China's blanket denial of any wrong doing good enough for you? Keep this link bookmarked for ongoing coverage of the situation as it unfolds.

China's Largest Search Engine Hacked by "Iranian Cyber Army"

Paul Lilly — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:56:58 -0600

Sorry Baidu users, your search engine is down for the count (in parts of the world, anyway), at least for the time being. No, a late night watchman didn't trip over the power cord in a data center, and instead the outage appears to be the work of Iranian hackers.

Baidu, China's most popular search engine with a market share exceeding 77 percent, now shows a page saying "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army." These are the same dudes who also attacked and defaced Twitter just a few weeks ago using the same method: DSN cache poisoning.

Sounds toxic, but rest assured, no chemicals were used. DNS cache poisoning involves corrupting a DNS table by replacing an IP with a malicious address, which in this case is the Iranian Cyber Army page.

Why the hackers targeted Baidu is not yet known.

Image Credit: thenextweb.com

Microsoft Changes Bing Privacy Tools, Takes Shot at Google

Bart Salisbury — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:54:39 -0600

Sensing a possible opening against the current search engine giant Google, Microsoft has announced some changes to Bing’s privacy tools, while at the same time taking a back-handed swipe at Google’s privacy policies.

In case you missed it, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in an interview on CNBC, seem to suggest that Google’s take on user privacy was pretty much open-ended. Schmidt said “If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.” Some thought this was Google blaming the victim rather than the victimizer. Not the sort of ‘got-your-back’ attitude many would like to see in their search-engine provider.

In addition, Google changed its search-engine privacy settings, to better personalize the experience. One of the changes made is the storing of 180-days of search history in a browser cookie, so Google has a database on which to draw for second-guessing what you want to look for.

In all the hubbub, Mozilla’s Director of Community Development, Asa Dotzler, said that users should drop Google in favor of Bing, which Dotzler said provides better privacy guarantees.

Hot on the heels of the controversy, Bing is touting both its privacy, and changes which enhance that privacy. Bing will now give you greater control over the history of your recent searches with “See all”, “Clear all”, and “Turn Off” options. (In “See all” you can delete individual search requests. “Turn off” lets you disable the history function all together.) In addition, Microsoft will store a maximum of four weeks of searches (up from 48-hours), in a browser cookie.

In the announcement of these changes, Microsoft said “...we've tried to build privacy and respect for your search history into the overall experience and not as an afterthought. Too many systems provide us with choice, but little control.”

Take that Google!

Image Credit: Microsoft

November Another Bad Month for Yahoo, Good Month for Bing

Bart Salisbury — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:12:19 -0600

The Business Insider is proclaiming that “Bing Crushes Yahoo Again in November”, based on numbers released by comScore for November search-engine performance. But do the numbers reported support this bold statement of success and failure?

According to comScore, search-engine market share broke down like this: Google, 65.6%; Yahoo, 17.5%; Bing, 10.3%; Ask Network, 3.8%; and AOL, 2.8%. (AOL still exists?) This seems to indicate that Yahoo and Bing still occupy the same ordinal ranks they did in October. A little closer, perhaps, but that’s about it. And, if anything, both were crushed by Google.

Maybe it’s the change from October to November that’s the cause for the hyperbole? Google was up 0.2 percentage points, Yahoo down 0.5 percentage points, and Bing up 0.4 percentage points. Yeah, Yahoo lost ground in November, and Bing gained, but the shifts don’t seem all that dramatic. And when you consider year-to-year (Y/Y) differences, Yahoo seems about the same place it was a year ago, with its "core search volume" up 1.1%. Bing is new to the market, so it showed a more dramatic 46% Y/Y increase (even though Bing isn’t yet a year old).

Still, trends for Yahoo seem pointed down, having fallen from a 20.1% market share in May to 17.5% in November, while Bing rose from 8.0% to 10.3%. Percentage-wise those differences may be meaningful. Maybe that justifies the hand-wringing over Yahoo and back-slapping for Bing.

Before getting too excited about the impending demise of Yahoo, it would be nice to see revenue figures for it and Bing. After all, it’s not the number of people using the service that really matters, it’s how much you make off those people that counts.

Image Credit: funny-potato.com