Google starts to get its China, uh, stuff together

As a long-time Tibetan human rights supporter, it pleases me no end that Google seems to be having a change of heart.

Google lawyer David Drummond just posted this on the Official Google Blog:

In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google… we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists… we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers…

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Maybe I can go back to believing in Google’s original vision.

Comparing Microsoft’s ruthless execs to Google’s cold engineers

Todd Bishop at TechFlash just posted an insightful interview with Ken Auletta, the author of both World War 3.0 (about Microsoft during the halcyon antitrust days) and Googled (an insider’s account of the Googlies).

“Microsoft, I came to think, were cold businessmen. They really wanted to harm Netscape,” Auletta said. “Google, they’re not cold businessmen, they’re cold engineers. No, it’s true. They’re not trying to kill the opposition, but they will kill opposition, but it’s inadvertent. … They’re not consumed by the thought of destroying their opposition. Bill Gates was consumed — and Microsoft was consumed — by the thought of destroying Netscape.”

Good stuff.

Bing at 10.7 percent and growing fast

Cnet News reports that Microsoft’s new emphasis on search is paying off. In August, Bing’s market share is pegged at 10.7%. Of course you need to take the numbers with a big grain of salt, but the fact is that Microsoft’s in a very strong position to get Bing going – fast.

In August, Google increased to 64% of the market, and Yahoo fell to 16%. Makes  you wonder if MS is having second thoughts about its pursuit of Yahoo.

Regardless, Microsoft is going to keep chomping up market share, simply because Internet Explorer 8 (and, thus, Wiundows 7) use Bing as the default search engine. Regardless of the technical merits, simple apathy counts for much.

 

Sun won’t turn blue after all

Rats.

Two good merger rumors and they both turn belly-up.

Google probably won’t buy Twitter. And IBM (almost) definitely won’t buy Sun.

How Google serves servers: shipping containers

I’m not sure how long it will take for Google to force this one off the air, but right now you can see a hand-held camera recording of a presentation that shows how Google uses 40-foot shipping containers to house server farms – up to 1,160 servers per container, according to the presentation.

Fascinating stuff.

Google to Twit?

Man, the merger rumors are out in full force.

The New York Times reports that IBM is poised to pay $7 billion for Sun.

And TechCrunch says they have reports from two independent sources that Google is close to buying Twitter.

Must be something in the water.

UPDATE: Kara Swisher at All Things Digital says, “In fact, Twitter and Google (GOOG) have simply been engaged in “some product-related discussions,” according to one source, around real-time search and the search giant better crawling the microblogging service.”

So why does the rumor get such traction? Because Google buying Twitter makes a whole lotta sense, for both sides.