The whole Google attack thing is far from over. We already have an item on page 2 about how the attack may not have originated from within China at all, but there’s more. Bill Gates has weighed in on the issue, and there are reports indicating that Google may not leave China at all.
As one would expect from a man like Bill Gates, he takes a very pragmatic approach to the current issue, which he calls “complex”. “The role of the Internet in every country has been very positive, letting people speak out in new ways,” he said, “And fortunately the Chinese efforts to censor the Internet have been very limited. You know, it is easy to go around it.”
Gates points to censorship rules in Germany that would be protected as free speech in the United States. For instance, pro-nazi statements are forbidden in Germany. While this is decidedly understandable considering the country’s history, we shouldn’t forget that Mein Kampf is illegal and/or restricted in many western countries (including mine), and here in The Netherlands we even have very popular politicians (sadly) who openly advocate making the Qur’an illegal. In the end, it’s all a matter of perspective.
“And so you have got to decide do you want to obey the laws of the countries you are in or not. If not, you may not end up doing business there,” Gates said, “You know, fortunately the trend towards openness and sharing ideas is being fostered in an incredible way.”
FOXNews is reporting that even though Google may close up google.cn, the company surely won’t leave China altogether. Google is in “delicate” talks with the Chinese government to retain its research centre, its advertising sales team (which generates most of the revenue), and its mobile team. It’s clear Google wants to maintain the lucrative parts of markets, and seeing as Google wasn’t doing too well in search anyway, closing it will generate massive goodwill in the west, without it harming the company too much financially.
If they can work it all out, I’d say it’s a pretty brilliant marketing move by the “Don’t be evil” company.
I find the following just a bit too hypocritical for my taste:
Is this guy serious? It took years of anti-competition investigations and massive fines before MS opened up and started allowing even playing field access from external vendors and software makers. Most would say we still aren’t there yet. Not until Bill Gates stepped down did we start to see any movement on this front at all.
Looking at the leaked Halloween emails and the strong arm tactics used to tie OEM vendors to his platform, I think Gates is the last person who’s advice I’d take in this matter.
two pretty different things you’re comparing there.
1. Business deals to tie you to one platform
2. The issue of freedom of speech and expression
I don’t see anything hypocritical with trying to tie people to your platform to make money… while at the same time supporting freedom of expression. hey… I think its a perfectly good business tactic. Microsoft is still profitable and pays its people well… as a software engineer… I say kudos. Apple closed models as well… kudos to them s well.
But if someone wants to host content on their own server and some else wants to view that content… more power to them… no matter what that content is.
Actually those two things can only be seen in connection.
#1 is incompatible with #2. You cannot have freedom of speech and expression when you are bound to one platform. Such freedom requires freedom from lock-in. If you cannot choose the platform on which you express your speech and expression then you don’t have freedom of speech and expression.
That said, I don’t think it should be illegal to attempt creating a vendor lock-in, as long as it is legal to circumvent such vendor lock-in attempts. So remove copyright, patents, DMCA and so on, and I’ll be find with any attempt to create de facto lock-ins (but never de jure lock-ins, though – which again requires abolition of copyright and so on).
EDIT: Addendum: Besides that I agree with SReilly. I too remember the Halloween docs and the general behaviour of Microsoft and Bill Gates. Gates’ behaviour in court and the mails between him and others in Microsoft is really damning. MS only play “nice”* because it is being beaten to submission.
* “nice” because MS is still trying to circumvent having to play by the rules – MS is merely adapting to the circumstances because it is forced; and not due to any actual change in its internal policies.
Edited 2010-01-27 05:52 UTC
I’ll second this statement.
If you don’t believe me then take a look at the public record of the Microsoft vs Comes trial.
A searchable archive of the large number of documents is being created over on groklaw (yeah I know that some OSNews posters hate PJ). They are tranfsorming the thousands of pages into web readable text.
Read some of the memo’s from BJ to his staff.
As far as I see it, the opinions of the senior management in Microsoft has not moved one iota. They are all about lock it and milk until the customer is bled dry.
One example of how you can avoid vendor lockin.
I do a lot of work with Java. Most of my customers use Websphere Application Server or WebLogic. But as the software is written in Java and they strictly enforce the JMS standards there is noting to stop them (apart from the effort) in moving from WAS to WebLogic to JBoss to Fiorano to Tibco to …
You certainly don’t get that option with Microsoft.
Oh, and all of the above products run on at least two H/W platforms (not just different versions of Windows)
When Microsoft produce full .Net Dev & Runtime systems for Z/OS, iOS, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, OSX etc, I’ll start to believe their mantra.
Right! Because freedom of speech and freedom of choice don’t go hand in hand.
Basically, your argument boils down to “It’s OK to remove freedom of choice as long as the individual has the freedom to bitch and moan about it.”
Sorry, but I just don’t buy that. It’s in every ones interest to uphold freedom in any way possible and that includes the freedom from having our choices removed from us, be that by governments or greedy corporations.
LMAO…good lord you nerds have an inflated sense of importance in the world. You really think that in not just the grand scheme of things in the world, but in any sense, that the issue of “choice” to which your refer to has any meaning? No, it does not. Only for those tiny little number of insecure geeks who need to cling to something in their lives does this have any importance. My god, it is if some have deluded their minds into thinking that “choice” could have any actual impact. It doesn’t. Hate to break the news, but ALL of OSS could disappear tomorrow and 99% of the world would not notice, or give a damn.
This is almost has idiotic and insane as the bible thumpers that think sending bibles to starving children is the answer. If just everyone had Linux and FOSS, why there would be no more repressive governments, no more starving children, no more wars…
I think you’ll find that pretty much every fortune 500 company, not to mention the countless universities and public institutions, would suffer debilitating costs and downtime due to their infrastructures suddenly disappearing over night. So you’re argument holds no absolutely no water what so ever.
By the way, who says I’m talking about FOSS in particular? If you take the time to read over my posts, you’ll find that a never once mentioned FOSS. In fact, I was talking about freedom of choice in general.
Frankly, your post stinks of troll. I know I shouldn’t feed trolls but your assertions are just so preposterous I couldn’t help myself.
I think you’ll find that pretty much every fortune 500 company, not to mention the countless universities and public institutions, would suffer debilitating costs and downtime due to their infrastructures suddenly disappearing over night. So you’re argument holds no absolutely no water what so ever.
By the way, who says I’m talking about FOSS in particular? If you take the time to read over my posts, you’ll find that a never once mentioned FOSS. In fact, I was talking about freedom of choice in general.
The only thing preposterous is thinking that “freedom of choice” in reference to a product has any relation to freedom and basic human rights. Oh wait, I forgot, what people in oppressed lands are really clamoring for is Linux on their desktop, but the damn evil corporation that is Microsoft has prevented this right?
Well done, Generic Troll #2. Replying to a quote from your own post and attacking SReilly for your own silly statement. Waterway to go!
Wow, that’s the third time in as many weeks that you have jumped to some outlandish conclusion based solely on your inability to read my posts properly. Well done!
As for your statements on freedom of choice not having anything to do with a product, let me ask you this. How would you feel if your government started telling you what you could or couldn’t buy? Would you or would you not consider that an infringement on your freedom to choose? And pray tell, how is that any different from when a corporation does it?
Beside those points mentioned above, you need to stop jumping to conclusions. Do you do that kind of thing IRL by any chance? Here’s a conclusion I’ll draw from all of this: You don’t have many friends, do you?
Technically…..
//begin imagination
Guy tries to buy a lead based painted figurine filled with herion and Uranium 235.
//end imagination
I’ll probably be voting no on yer “freedom to choose” bill.
Although I understand what you are saying, you seem to fail to understand where I am coming from.
What I was doing was illustrating that limiting some ones ability to choose is the same be that by company greed or by government decree. Obviously, allowing people to buy atomic bombs is something any sane individual would like to see curtailed but at the end of the day, even if done in the public interest, it’s still limiting some one’s freedom to choose.
My argument was quite simple. Just because it’s a company doing it does not mean that it’s not limiting freedom of choice. The whole question of it being the right or wrong thing to do is not what I was talking about but if you want to go there, I can do that too.
Who would you rather have limiting your freedom of choice? Your democratically elected government, which ultimately is answerable to you, or a corporation which is answerable only to it’s shareholders?
So you’re comparing the power of government with Microsoft?
I can choose to buy a Microsoft product or not. If I do , I have to deal with consequences of that. If i don’t like their terms and conditions… I don’t buy a MS product.
I cannot choose my government (as an individual). So these government laws restrict what I do without me agreeing to them.
I suppose government has the ultimate EULA.
By being born, you agree to all terms and conditions that we, the government decide and can arbitrarily change at our will. Should you choose to leave our country, you will automatically be enrolled in the EULA of another government.
Companies can only dream of the kind of power government has.
Edited 2010-01-27 19:37 UTC
Actually, I’m doing no such thing. If you read over my statements, you’ll find that I am explaining that freedom of choice can be removed by both a government and a corporation. Where in my statements do I mention the ability to enact laws and change constitutions?
As you can choose you’re government.
Yes you can. History is littered with examples of individuals doing just that.
If you don’t agree, start a campaign and get those laws revoked. By the way, those laws are beholden to the constitution, a document that in most countries cannot be changed without either plebiscite or a large majority of elected members of the government voting in favour of that amendment.
You don’t get the chance to choose what goes into your EULA. You do get a chance to shape and change your government, at least if your in a democracy.
You obviously don’t know much about democratic governments. If any changes to the law are not made within the legal framework for government, they are null and void.
Yes, and if they had their way they would get it. Democratic governments are ultimately beholden to the people (unless you’re a US citizen where it is far more likely they are beholden to whatever special interest lobbies “donated” the largest campaign funds), corporations are beholden to no one except their shareholders. I would much rather laws be enacted by people who have the population’s best interest at heart, at least most of the time, than an entity that is driven solely by greed.
I’m always puzzled by people who think democracy somehow means you as an individual have a choice.
If the rest of the population disagrees with me, I have no choice. More likely… the voting parties and special interests get their way… and I have no choice.
But c’est la vie. That’s about the time when I say… our world views are too different to even have a discussion.
tata.
Maybe it’s because not all democracies are Representative Democracies?
From wikipedia:
See above.
If you didn’t want a discussion, why did you bother answering in the first place?
See ya.
Maybe you simply are blowing out so much BS out your ass you have no clue? Well gee, according to your logical thinking, if HP can’t provide me with Linux because they made a business arrangement with Microsoft, somehow I am f–king repressed?
– Now funny, but I thought the topic at hand was about China’s repression of dissidents and freedom of speech, basic human rights, etc..
But of course since the topic at hand is Bill Gates, he of course has repressed you now hasn’t he? Pray tell, do tell us how your so called freedoms have been infringed by Microsoft. I mean true freedoms. Have you been arrested for your incessant Microsoft whining? Have you been charged for installing your favorite freetard OS? Seriously, get a f–king clue in life. Drawing any connection to Microsoft’s business practices and China’s repression of human rights is downright moronic, to which you now can be crowned king of the morons.
Oh nooooo, if I don’t get my hands on an Apple iPad, should I call Amnesty International?
You really are an ass hole, you know that? If you can’t talk to people without talking down to them, you need to learn some manners.
Wow, there you go again with the jumping to conclusions. You really should get that looked at you know cause you keep coming across like a total ass hole and ignorant to boot. Read over my posts again, dipshit. I quite clearly stated that Bill Gates is, IMO, the last person on this planet to be able to talk “sharing” and “open ideas”. You choosing to interpret that as my drawing any connection between China’s oppression of dissidents and MS’s unfair business practices is what’s really moronic.
I have a mentally handicapped 10 year old neighbour that wouldn’t even come out with a statement like that. Now run along, child. We grown ups want to have a real conversation.
Your an idiot
Well done! Totally taken out of context. Your apprenticeship as a troll is now officially over.
But there has been, and still is, in classic Liberalism, a close connection between free markets and the free market of ideas. I would say that Gates, Google, and the Chinese all, when it suits them, try to tinker with these two parts of the equation, according to what suits them. So Gates can talk about the freedom to circumvent firewalls while seeking a monopoly like domination in his market; Google can make money on the back of the pretense a lot of the time of being ‘free and open’ and ‘seeing no evil’, when, if you you deal with them, you’d better watch out for the non-disclosure stuff in their contracts, and the elaborate limitations on your freedom to act. The Chinese on the other hand are trying to fob off the entire population with the first half of the equation, and giving out all sorts of reasons to its people and the rest of the world, to underpin the idea its all you need to be ‘free’, so that you don’t necessarily need the second half.
Go read 1984, not for the ‘Big Brother’ aspects, but on account of the perpetual wars, alliances and re-alliances between the three fictitious global powers: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#The_War
Does this not sound at all familiar (China, Microsoft and Google)? And look at the purpose of the war, of supposedly differing ideas – “the true purpose of the unwinnable, perpetual war is to consume human labour and commodities, hence the economy of a super-state cannot support economic equality (a high standard of life) for every citizen.”
So, in the end, we are being fed with the idea that all this has to do with an ideological battle around the concept of freedom, yet, there are only shifting accommodations in order to make money against a backdrop of sustained inequality.
As Vonnegut said: “History, read it and weep”!
Unfortunately, I agree with you.
A lotta comments here.
I guess it comes down to so called ‘positive’ and negative rights… Love getting political here
Microsoft’s use of proprietary methods or vendor lockin does not impact your freedom of choice.
There is a distinction between ‘choice’ and ‘freedom of choice’. Just like there is a distinction between ‘speech’ and ‘freedom of speech’.
You are free to say whatever you want. That is your freedom. That doesn’t mean you have a right to have an article printed in a news paper. That is up to the editor of the company. That doesn’t mean anyone has to listen to you. That doesn’t mean nobody can can take offense to your speech. There might be consequences. Maybe they refuse to do business with you. Maybe they end up hating you.
So it is with software. You are free to choose any operating system. You are free to host your content in any format. But if you choose a Microsoft solution, there are consequences to that choice. You might be locked into their platform. other people might not be able to view your content.
The distinction is an important one. ‘Positive rights’ require someone else to do something. One of the reason I don’t think they are rights at all. Legislation to use standards… require Microsoft to do something… perhaps against its own interests. Just like universal healthcare requires doctors and nurses to do something. Maybe it is for the ‘greater good’ and perhaps even neccessary… but they are not rights as far as I’m concerned.
For example, if Microsoft decided to drop support for TCP/IP and instead bundle their own proprietary network protocol… not only would it be the stupidest business decision as people would not buy windows… but the very threat might jeopardize society so much give the large share of windows that government does step in and mandate they not do that. I would consider that a violation of Microsoft’s rights (the people in Microsoft’s ability to do business as a corporation as far as I’m concerned has no rights… but there are people making decisions in the company)… but one that has sufficient cause. But such cases are very rare… and it I rarely see a need for it. Most people/companies are not so suicidal so as to piss off their customer base to such an extent…
And no webstandards are not so important. Even during Microsoft’s very ‘non-compliant days’, they never restricted 3rd party browsers and as such I never saw a problem. It made life difficult for sure… but the world went on in case you missed it. It was not a crises deserving of violating the rights of the workers and management at Microsoft.
Real rights require nothing of other people… except that they leave you alone. You are free to say what you want. You are free to own property. You are free to choose what software you will use. You are free to publish things in whatever format you wish.
Edited 2010-01-27 16:31 UTC
I too have read the infamous memo and you need to read it within context; if you wanted the super-duper discounted Windows then you had to agree to a set of conditions. As far as I see it there was no ‘strong arming’ beyond giving an OEM the option and the OEM deciding that the lack of flexibility is well and truly offset by the deep discounts that they would receive. That is no different to Intel offering super deep discounts to OEM vendors if they go exclusively Intel for CPU’s.
The morality of business, quite frankly, is irrelevant to the discussion when one takes into account that each and every OEM was given an option; it was never rammed down their throats. At no time did Microsoft ever state that there was only one option, at no point were these OEM’s ever stopped from developing their own in house operating system and middleware for the mainstream desktop market. It was the drones within the Wintel companies who decided that their main focus would be producing cheap boxes and pushing out of the factory with Windows installed. It takes two to tango and it is mighty rich when I hear OEM’s moan when they were the instigators of their own personal hell.
This is where we disagree. Apparently a common disagreement between european libertarians and our US equivalent(s) (plural?).
The strong arm tactics against OEM resellers combined with the strong arm tactics against IBM, Novell, Netscape, Gates giving weird answers in court and so on gives a clear image of a company that doesn’t play by the rules unless forced to it, nor cares about social responsibility (another area where we differ).
Well, I am not an American – if you have even a casual glance at my profile you can see I am from New Zealand; and no, I am not located in the Netherlands as some Americans assume that is where New Zealand resides.
I understand that they are a hard business but at the same time the most I have seen them done so far was in regards to the Netscape case where they flat out refused to allow OEM’s to place competitors web browser icon on the desktop either for the super-duper discounted version or the normal OEM contract. So you are correct in terms of abusing their monopoly in that regard – however, lets also remember that at the time Netscape was horrendously crap, I remember using it on various iterations of Windows and each time it was a crash happy piece of crap. It wasn’t until Firefox was released that it finally became a viable competitor to Internet Explorer. So to blame all of Netscapes woes on Microsoft is actually ignoring Netscapes own role in their demise.
Regarding IBM, IBM was in a position of dominance – to claim that some how little Microsoft pussy whipped IBM into submission is ignoring who was the dominant one in the relationship, the alternatives IBM could have chosen and more importantly the number of opportunities that IBM had and failed to make use of – OS/2 being the best example of opportunities failing to be taken advantage of by IBM.
Regarding Novell – anyone who is honest about their business history will tell you that their direction was as chaotic as Corel and Sun Microsystems. Failure to update their operating system, buying out Wordperfect and attempting to launch a middleware but it being more expensive than its competitor, the lack of a decent desktop operating system so that there was an integrated desktop and server strategy between the server middleware and desktop middleware. If Microsoft ceased existing Novell would have still self imploded.
I agree that it’s exactly the same as what Intel have done, but that does not A) Negate what I was saying in any means and b) Make it right. Just because other businesses do it does not mean that it is not limiting the consumer’s freedom to choose. Why else would we have anti-competition hearings to curtail monopolies?
Although I couldn’t care less about OEMs and their moaning, I disagree with your views about choices. Being given the choice between being able to compete in the market and having to charge drastically more than your competitors is no choice at all.
There is nothing illegal about a monopoly – the issue is when a monopoly abuses its power to maintain its dominance within a given space rather than through competition. Again, it was the OEM’s who decided not to create their own in house stack – something I advocated OEM’s needed to do 10 years ago as to maintain margins and differentiation. Well, now they’ve gone down the track with the race to the bottom and the consequences now is a zero innovation OEM sector pumping out millions of cloned machines with little to differentiate besides pricing and hardware specifications. Quite honestly it is unhealthy to have an industry where innovation is next to zero because there is insufficient cash to develop new technologies. Also the OEM’s were presented with *TWO* options; your accusation of monopoly abuse might hold water if they were only presented with one option – but we already know that wasn’t the case.
They had the choice between either the slightly higher priced OEM copy of Windows or the cheaper one; at no time were they ever presented with only one option. They had the option to absorb the slightly higher cost per unit but they didn’t – so why is its Microsoft’s responsibility for the irresponsible nature of OEM business decisions?
Edited 2010-01-27 20:40 UTC
Why would OEMs want to innovate in an industry where margins are so low they are almost non existent? It makes absolutely no business sense for them to do anything of the kind. OEMs assemble products made from other company components of their own choosing, such is the nature of the X86 market. Just because you don’t agree with that business model does not mean that MS has a right to force them to use only their OS.
When talking about the X86 market, The last OEM to truly try and innovate where Compaq and after they reverse engineered the BIOS, the only thing they where doing differently where custom boards, not even custom chipsets and yet they still ended up being bought out by HP even though they had the superior product.
Again, OEMs having such a low margin when it comes to the X86 market is a perfect reason for them not being able to go for a higher prices product. It would have been, and has been for many companies, economic suicide. Developing their own OS and middleware would have been prohibitively expensive and is not what OEMs where in the market for in the first place. Using that as an excuse to somehow justify the illegal activities of MS is just not good enough, hence why MS ended up getting their arses kicked.
Yes, a monopoly in its self is not illegal but I never said it was in the first place.
“seeing as Google wasn’t doing too well in search anyway”
Why does everybody keep saying that? According to some sources [1] google has 43% market share. That is still what – 100 times more users than from for example The Netherlands?
1 – http://business.rediff.com/report/2010/jan/14/tech-google-china-mar…
I think thats because majority of studies show Google has 25%ish share on china. This ofc comes down to idiocy when counting internet market shares. I use both Bing and Google so is my share going Google or Bing or both?!? I think more better way is to count profit from ad sales in china market, and if I understand correct Google isn’t doing so well. Keep mind that this is figure that truly matters, market share does influence ad sales but only on long term.
Look, even 25% or 10% in china is worth fighting for
I don’t want to enter into a political debate, it’s not my intention; but, let me quote Mr. Gates on other recent interview (which you can read here http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thebusinessofgiving/201088663…):
As far as I know, law is enforceable in Uganda as well. That law it’s not something one shouldn’t worry much about but a monstrosity that goes against basic human rights and that ought to be condemned no matter what.
Now, regarding censorship, he’s answering in a similar manner. Just to remind, the Universal declaration of human rights states that “freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” is a right.
As far as I know Germany fully respects this while China clearly doesn’t. Is there any report that acusses Germany of censorship?.It’s foolish trying to justify not to do anything about China increasing will to censorship with ramblings and vague excuses. Gates ought to support Google on this. His statements are not proper of a democrat, sensu stricto.
I wouldn’t say that Germany fully respects the freedom of speech. But then, I’m from Denmark and we have virtually unlimited free speech (though not all are using it in a responsible and/or sensible way).