China and the Year of the GNU/Linux Desktop

It's an old joke by now that this year will be the year of the GNU/Linux desktop – just like last year, and the year before that. But now there's a new twist: that this year will be the year of the GNU/Linux smartphone – with the difference that it's really happening.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Going Googly in China

The news that Google was no longer prepared to censor its search results in China has a number of interesting and important aspects.

First, it's worth noting that this extremely big news was not announced at a press conference, or even with a press release, but on a blog. That's not so surprising given that Google prides itself on being geeky, but it has one huge implication: any journalist that is not following blogs (and I'd also add Twitter) is no longer adequately equipped to stay on top of the news. The press release is officially dead (and good riddance.)

The other thing that is striking is what is not said. Google speaks of

a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China

It then announces that as a result of this attack:

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn

But hang on a minute: how on earth will removing censorship diminish the likelihood of further attacks? Censorship, it would seem, has nothing to do with those attacks - unless Google is suggesting that the Chinese government was behind those attacks in some way, with this latest move from the company as a direct retaliation and warning.

And that, of course, is precisely what is going on, but there is no mention of any of this explicitly in the blog post. Nonetheless, it is extraordinary that a company should thus publicly, if only implicitly, accuse a government of being involved in attacks on its system.

As to the consequences of Google's statement, I imagine that the Chinese government will just block Google completely - China's recent actions show that it is no mood for compromise. Indeed, it is actually clamping down *harder* on the Internet, so anything like uncensored search results will be totally unacceptable.

Unfortunately, I don't think this will have much effect within China. The leading search engine, Baidu, will just pick up the slack. Many people on the Internet in China regard the West's attitude to censorship and freedom of speech as hypocritical, and unwarranted meddling. It will be easy for the Chinese government to sell this as arrogant Westerners lecturing to the Chinese (again) as a way of covering up their failure to topple Baidu.

More interesting is the effect this has on the West. The latter has been increasingly subservient to China recently, with its pathetic acceptance of the crackdown in Tibet and Xinjiang, and its acquiescence in the propaganda of the Olympic games. This was largely based on the fact that China's economy was perceived as so important that other issues fell by the wayside (although I was under the impression that there was a name for selling oneself in this way for a bit of dosh.)

Google's action, if picked up by others, might lead to the West taking a more principled approach, whereby it is not prepared to sell its soul for a few Renminbi. Sadly, it's probably too much to expect the West to drop its hypocritical actions (censorship, surveillance) as well....

Chinese Whispers

Here's another billion reasons why DRM'd music downloads will die out - and why copyright law will need to be rewritten:

Like millions of other young Chinese, he downloads them for free using Baidu.com (BIDU ), the country's biggest search engine. Baidu makes it so easy—just hit the MP3 tab on the home page, type in the name of the song, and click. What's more, Zhu doesn't believe he and his friends are doing anything wrong. "I think it's a problem with the law, not with us users," he says.

The Eyes Have It

I'm not a great user of Baidu, for geographical and linguistic reasons. But this eye-tracking analysis that compares Baidu with Google is interesting for the light it sheds on how people use search engines.

Love and the Long March Spirit

John Battelle calls search engines "databases of intentions"; in this respect the top ten lists of queries say a lot about us. Interesting, then, to compare the top Western engine with the leading site for the East - Google vs Baidu.

Here's the Google list for "What?"

1. what is hezbollah
2. what is carisoprodol
3. what is acyclovir
4. what is alprazolam
5. what is tramadol
6. what is ajax
7. what is hydrocodone
8. what is vicodin
9. what is xenical
10. what is xanax

I think we can spot a certain trend here. Meanwhile, here's Baidu's list:

1. What is love?
2. What is the Long March spirit?
3. What is a blog?
4. What is dual-core?
5. What is 3G?
6. What is harmonious society?
7. What are futures? (stocks)
8. What is a trojan horse? (software)
9. What is happiness?
10. What is an ecosystem?

Maybe that's what we need in the West: more people searching for love and the Long March spirit.

Persistent Search for the Ideal? I Think Not

Baidu.com, Google's main rival in China, has launched its own version of Wikipedia (called Baidu Baike). It turns out that Baidu's name is rather poetic. According to the site:

"Baidu" was inspired by a poem written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles. "…hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood." Baidu, whose literal meaning is hundreds of times, represents persistent search for the ideal.

Alas, neither Baidu nor Baidu Baike show much evidence of that persistent search for the ideal, since they censor great swathes of knowledge. The real, warts-and-all Wikipedia has some details:

According to Baidu Baike's policies, these kinds of articles or comments would be deleted:

1. pornographic or violent articles
2. advertising
3. politically reactionary content
4. personal attacks
5. unethical content
6. malicious, meaningless content

The third point is particularly notable, as the content of the encyclopedia will have to satisfy Chinese government censors. There are no articles about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, "六四" (literaly "six four", a common acronym for the protest), human rights ("人权"), democracy ("民主") or Falungong ("法轮功"). In fact, due to the effects of Great Firewall of China, attempts to search for these terms from some domains lead to denial of access to the Baidu search engine for several minutes, even for users outside China.

The last point is interesting. As this blog posting explains, if you cut and paste the Chinese characters for terribly naughty words like "democracy" (民主) into Baidu,

Not only will you receive no response, but you won’t be able to access the site again for a while. First-hand evidence of censorship.

Maybe we should all give it a whirl to show our unquenchable interest in concepts such as democracy: let's just call it a persistent search for the ideal.