Google's Finest Moment

[Onkel Neal]

Google vs China--fight!

As Google's engineers investigated the hack, they realized that organizations in China had been trying to penetrate the security systems of at least 20 American companies in the following fields: finance; technology; media; chemicals; the Internet. Moreover, the hackers' main targets appeared to be the Gmail accounts of human rights activists who specialize in China.

Maybe we need to build the great firewall of China? Around China?

[Col. Caldwell]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Maybe we need to build the great firewall of China? Around China?

lol China already has it's Great Firewall of China. They already restrict access to social networking sites to some extent. It's more like the US needs to beef up its own firewall.

[AVGWarhawk]

It is a bit disturbing that China is doing this. Yes, a large firewall and anything else that can be used for security.

[Catfish]

Hello,
China hacked servers of the german government already in 2002, but it was all "ok" and played down, since german companies have invested billions of money in production plants in China - would have been very bad for the dividend, and the fine upstanding german govenment having such a nice relationship to a stone-age communism, torturing dictatorship that regularly accuses Tibet for hiding weapons of mass destruction , not to mention Taiwan.
Well, i also would not want to be judged by other nations, from my own government's and company's behaviour (which is astonishingly very close to each other) lol

It is almost "disturbing" for me as a german, that a company (if late) acts as Google just did - almost an event to change my viewpoint towards big companies ... but no, not yet lol.
Certainly, Google only reacted after being hacked by China itself ... but i'd still say Hats off !

Greetings,
Catfish

[Buddahaid]

I think it would be fair to say most governments hack others routinely.

Good job Google.

[Task Force]

I say we nuke them... but thats just me....

I get this feeling that someday china and the US might have a way...

[Skybird]

Do not read too much into it. Google'S business inchina went bad, with little market shares. Google also tries to boost its global image, since it wants to beef up business by selling its own hardware that should be used to use their services even more. The hacking by the chinese is just the excuse to turn their back on a market in china that did not hold what it promised, but came at the cost of a PR desaster (Google voluntarily self-censored itself etc etc).

so, this decision of Google has nothing to do with good inetention and noble motives, and it certainly is not Google'S "finest moment". It's pure business decision. human rights and censorship plays no role at all in it.

Google is a data kraken that accumulates power by that that has no traditi9nal public or poltical legitimation at all. And as the German minstrre of jutsice just has pointed out soem days ago, it creates a massive, market-dominating monopole, almost onconfronted, while aggressively pushing ahead, creating precedneces that even break laws - and then see if they get away with it and can use this breaking of laws as a precedence for excusing even further pushing ahead. After all, privacy protection is unknown to them, and in America in general, awareness for privacy data protection is underdeveloped, to put it mildly, compared to EU laws.

For search terms that in any way one day could eventually be used against me in the widest range of possible contexts, I have stopped to use Google a longer while ago. Google Chrome is a big no-no, and despite Google earth I neither use nor support any Google services - especially not those where registration would be needed or data on my system and my internet behavior flows back to Google (especially true for Chrome), to get stored there for decades to come, without me having any knowledge abbout and access to these data sets, and where they are going and to whom they are being made available.

So, no finest moment of Google it is, Neal. It just is a business decision. Ideals have nothing, really nothing to do with it - else they would have done itmonths if not years earlier - or would never have agreed in the first to chinese conditions.

[Schroeder]

Originally Posted by Task Force

I say we nuke them... but thats just me....

Oh come on, nuking more than one billion people for what exact reason?

@Catfish
I think Google is just pulling the plug because of the massive loss of reputation they have had after working together with the Chinese government on censoring their search results.
BTW if you want to see stone age communism you should have a look at North Korea. China has brutal capitalism backed by a dictatorship.

[Task Force]

Hmm. yea, nukeing is alittle overdoing it... But still, somebody needs to do something about it. not let them get away with trying to get into anouther countrys Info...

[Spike88]

Originally Posted by Task Force

Hmm. yea, nukeing is alittle overdoing it... But still, somebody needs to do something about it. not let them get away with trying to get into anouther countrys Info...

Countries try to get into another Country's info all the time. Its called Espionage.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

I think it would be fair to say most governments hack others routinely.

You mean that now they're using computers to, to...spy on each other?

What will they do next?

[Task Force]

yea. I knows. lol but still... doing it and getting cought.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Task Force

Hmm. yea, nukeing is alittle overdoing it... But still, somebody needs to do something about it. not let them get away with trying to get into anouther countrys Info...

There are four times as many Chinese than there are US Americans. US finances are at the Chineses' mercy, and they have indicated that they are starting to lose patience. they also have declared that they have started to set up a missile defence system. and in the past months it has become clear that all the economical investements into China ha ve not - and will not - lead to a building of a democratic regime, but that these investements are knowledge that now they start to turn against us (I can't blaim them for us behaving silly and naively wishing for the best).

So, who is this "somebody" who needs to do something, and what is this "something" exactly...?

China is too big to be a part of any western-designed order or institution. It is neither a part of Asia, nor of the gobal market, or anything. like I used to say that Russia is russia due to it's size, a category in itself, the same I say about China: China is China, a category in itself.

We did not understand this, that's why we helped them to learn how they could beat us. China say "thank you" for that, and gives us a smile that is meant to show us it's teeth.

[AVGWarhawk]

Yeah but they like Buicks.