January 27, 2010 • 27 mins
In this episode of TechStuff, Jonathan and Chris discuss how global politics affect the Web, focusing specifically on the recent controversy between Google and the Chinese government.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everyone,
and welcome again to tech stuff. My name is Chris Philette,
(00:20):
and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
works dot com. And as he often does on these occasions,
sitting across from me is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Major though.
Right then, so uh let's talk politics, yeah, you know,
because that's what we normally talk about. Tech stuff is
all about the politics. And we're not talking PC versus
MAC people. Um, although we could talk PC versus Mack people.
(00:45):
I mean, I don't have any research on it, but
I like John Hodgman frankly that that's sort of a
political topic to right, we're really looking at all. Right,
So the web is a global entity, Okay, so we're
talking about the you know, the web is all over
the world, and there are web companies that have a
presence now all over the world. You might the web
(01:07):
is really made it a lot easier to become a
multi national global organization. Uh, you know, back in the
the good old days of the eighties. Um, you pretty
much had to be a mega corporation to have any
sort of presence outside of your country of origin. You
might have a few sites in and uh, you know,
(01:28):
another country, but um, it was only a few companies
that really had a global presence. Well, now with the Web,
everyone kind of has a global presence, whether they like
it or not. Right, and some of these companies don't
like it. We'll get to that. But part of the uh,
the flip side of the coin of having a global
presence is having to deal with global politics. And uh,
(01:50):
not every country treats the web the same way that
we in the West do. No, I say we because
you know I live in the United States. That's really
where my frame of reference is. The way the United
States handles the Internet and the Web. Actually not even
all Western nations, that's true. That's true. So so companies
(02:10):
that have a presence in various countries, especially any anyone
that is trying to generate revenue in these countries. Uh,
they may find that they have to operate under a
different set of parameters and they had originally intended and
in some cases this comes into direct conflict with the
company's philosophy. And um, I wasn't sure about all the
(02:33):
different things you wanted to talk about, but I think
the bulk of this conversation would really center around Google
and China because it's a great example of how a
a multi national company can have some problems within one
single country and what could lead to it deciding to
no longer do business there. Now, just there's a bit
(02:53):
of clarification, especially for those of you who are catching
up on our podcast now. A lot of you like to,
you know, when you first tune in, go back and
listen to earlier episodes. So as we are recording this,
we're actually in the throes of conversation about what has
happened over the past few days in our time UM
(03:15):
with an attack on Google's servers. Apparently it just came
out today the day we are recording this, that the
attack came from a computer in Taiwan, UM and what
happened was, UH, emails containing PDF attachments went out to people,
UH from many different organizations. Uh. They are apparently about
(03:36):
thirty three different companies, including Google, where people individuals received
emails with these PDF attachments. Well, the PDFs were exploiting
a zero day vulnerability, which means unpatched. Basically, UH hole
in the back of the UH Adobe Acrobat reader code.
(03:56):
And what that allowed UH the attackers to do was
essentially reroute traffic from the affected computers with they trojan
what they call a trojan horse. It appears as one
thing in this case of PDF, but contains malware. UM
and UH they were able to take UM intellectual property
(04:17):
from in this case what we're talking about mainly Google
and the Gmail servers. Now, um it it affected a
lot of people obviously, UM. But Google has been the
most outspoken as of this date, UM and said, look,
as a result of this, we are not going to
(04:38):
comply with the censorship requirements that the Chinese government has
put on us, which is causing a great bruhaha in
countries all over the world right now. To give a
little more perspective, China does have some pretty strict restrictions
on what the citizens of China can and cannot access.
That may be the biggest understatement you've spoke in this year. Yeah, alright,
(05:01):
So China likes to keep a very firm grip on
what the Chinese citizens are China. When I say China, mainly,
I'm talking about this shorthand for Chinese government. So the
Chinese government likes to keep a tight grip on what
the citizens can access, uh so much so that there
is a a h the Great Firewall of China. It's
(05:23):
something that we all refer to outside of China. Um
the Great Firewall of China is this this firewall that
blocks incoming data that the Chinese government doesn't want citizens
to access. This ranges from everything from pornography too, anything
that criticizes the politics and policies of the Chinese government,
(05:45):
including things like its position on tibet Um. There are
things are just considered taboo within Chinese culture that stuff
is blocked. And then there's the stuff that the government
just doesn't want citizens to have access to that gets blocked.
To Yes, that information like Tienamen Square. That's a huge one,
and so go ahead. I wanted to point out, though,
(06:06):
just as a as a point of clarification, that the
person who wrote this actually came out on Google's blog.
It was written by David Drummond, who is the senior
vice president and of Corporate Development and the chief Legal
officer of Google, and he pointed out, we don't know
whether or not the Chinese government is actually involved with this.
There's no way to tell for sure who is who
(06:27):
was the attacker in this case. Yeah, but if you
read between the lines, it is essentially saying that we
can't be certain, but we're you know, I would say that,
I would say that the reasonable interpretation of reading any
of the reports suggests that ultimately the Chinese government had
something to do with these attacks. Put it this way,
(06:49):
we haven't mentioned I just realized we haven't mentioned one
of the things that might lead them to believe that
what the information was. Yes, the information actually the the hackers, Um,
we're targeting accounts of Chinese non Chinese dissidence. Yeah, people
who were advocating for human rights within China. That was
it was their information, and as far as we can tell,
(07:09):
it wasn't like their emails or their documents or anything.
It was more just who they were and you know,
where they were really well, and which is bad enough.
So it could honestly could have been somebody who wanted
to make it appear as that the Chinese government was
behind it, but also could have been the Chinese government.
(07:31):
What motive would would anyone have to frame the Chinese government?
Why would they need that information. I mean, it doesn't
make sense. I think it was it. He's notorious like that.
I'n't going to take a little moment here and think
about pie Um. So I wanted to mention here about
the the whole Google China event. Google going into China
(07:52):
in the first place was kind of a sticky situation.
The reason being is that Google has an informal motto
that says, don't be evil, all right, and they define
that motto within their investor relations page as meaning a
couple of different things. One of the things they mean
is that they want to provide their customers with unbiased information.
(08:13):
So when you put in a search result in Google,
you should get unbiased search results, right, you shouldn't. You
shouldn't be getting uh you know, these are the ones
that Google thinks are best or they have a deal
with this company, and so their search results are going
to come back to you, and other search results from
competing companies won't come back to you. That is against
Google's policy. So you should whenever you put in a
(08:35):
search query, you should get unbiased information and return. Their
second tenant and don't be evil, is to operate within
the boundaries of the law. So Google can't do something
that's illegal. Even if they think that this is quote
unquote right, Um, they wouldn't do it because it's against
the law. Instead, they would lobby to have the law change.
(08:57):
They would work, you know, in a in a legal
manner to have the whatever it was removed so that
they could operate the way they wanted to. David Drummond
has actually made that clear that as of again as
of the date we're recording, is Google wants to work
with the Chinese government to find a way that it
can deliver search results in China without censoring the material.
(09:18):
And yeah, right, Well that was the point, was that
back when Google first got into China, those two tenants
of don't be Evil were at odds with each other
because they could not provide unbiased information to customers in
China and operate within the parameters the law. The two
things were at odds. There was no way you could
do both at the same time. You could either do
(09:40):
it illegally where you're providing uncensored search results, which would
just mean that the Chinese would eventually filter out your
site and no one would have access to it anyway,
or you would have to play ball with the Chinese
government and filter your search results to remove any links
to things that the Chinese government deemed inappropriate for the
citizens to see. So the was no way that they
(10:00):
could follow their own motto by going into business in China.
But at the same time, they said, you know, we
think that being able to provide some information is better
than not being able to provide any information. So we're
willing to take a chance and operate within China, see
what happens, and if the situation goes for the worst,
then we will reevaluate our position within China. And that's
(10:22):
kind of what seems to have happened over this past week.
And uh, it should be pointed out too that China
is not exactly a small market for Internet users. So
there are at one report I saw states that there
are around three d fifty million people who use the
web on a regular basis in China, and that number
is growing, and that's actually getting to the point where
(10:44):
it's it's eclipsing the United States. No small market, so
it's it's going to be hard for people like Microsoft
and Yahoo just to walk away and ignore them. Now,
on the flip side of that coin, you could argue
that Google itself is not a big player within the
search engine space in China, which is true now in
(11:04):
the United States, Google has the majority of the market
share in search. I mean it's like sixty something percent.
It's crazy amount of considering how many companies are out
there that provide search. In China, it is I think
in third or fourth place. Uh there's a Chinese government. Uh, well,
it's an organization that is friendly with the Chinese government.
(11:24):
I'm not sure that is state sponsored, right, Okay, but
there's Yeah, there's a search engine that within China cooperative,
its cooperative with the government. That is then the number
one space. Right, So bay Do is number one in China.
Google is is trailing behind bay Do, but is catching up.
(11:45):
It is made up some ground. However, some people have
pointed out that since Google isn't the number one, they
don't have the same kind of stock in China that
they would in other countries. It's easier for them to
pull up stakes and leave because they're not abandoning a
huge market the way they were they would be if
they were in the United States. So the question is
if Google were the number one search engine in China
(12:07):
and this had happened. Would Google still make the same
move of saying, you know what, you have violated our trust.
We weren't really sure about this or this situation in
the first place when we came in here, we're gonna leave.
Would they be able to do that if they were
number one, would they be able to to to say
goodbye to all that money? Part of that question is
hard to answer, just because Google has to answer to
shareholders and shareholders as a whole. I don't mean to
(12:30):
paint all shareholders with the same brush, because I know
it's not the case. But there's there's kind of a
general rule of thumb, which is that shareholders are willing
to put up with a lot if it means that
they're going to get a return on their investment. And
that may even mean, say, you know what, I understand
that this violates principles that you hold dear, But at
(12:51):
the same time, we're making lots of money. So as
long as we're able to make that money, we will,
you know, just kind of look the other way on
the whole human its issues and censorship issues. Um, I
don't know if Google would have been able to walk
away and Google, let me be clear, at the time
we're recording this, Google hasn't walked away yet. Um, but
(13:11):
they have said that they are willing to pull up
stakes and leave the country if they are not able
to come to some sort of agreement with the Chinese government,
and the Chinese government, for its part, so far, as said,
we're not in the wrong here. We have these rules. Google.
You either obey these rules or you don't work within
our country. So it's kind of a standoff right now.
We have to see whether or not Google is going
to make good on its threat to to leave. Uh.
(13:33):
I'm very curious to see how this affects the landscape
in China if Google were to leave, and actually the
global landscape really when you think about it. There was
an article in the New York Times too that it's
very very curious because the Chinese people are aware that
something is going on with Google, but they are unaware
that it revolves around any arguments surrounding free speech. Um. Well,
(13:56):
that's what happens when your speech is controlled, right. Uh.
But there has been um an outpouring of sympathy for Google.
People have been coming to the headquarters in Beijing and
leaving flowers and candles and other mementos. Uh. So you know,
(14:17):
just all kinds of people have been dropping by, which
is not something that I would necessarily expect to see. Uh.
For the third or fourth place, um, uh, you know
search engine in China, I have the feeling that some
people may know more than they may be letting on. Well,
(14:37):
it is known that there are plenty of people in
China who are using various services to get around the
firewall and are accessing information that is verboten in uh
in China. Um, there are plenty of people who are
using proxy servers and things like that in order to
get access to more information than they otherwise would be
allowed to to see. So some of that might be
(15:00):
coming into play. Um. Yeah, it's kind of hard to
say without without being there and knowing the whole situation,
Like we can't, for instance, we don't know if Google's
motives are really pure. We don't know if Google has
been looking for a while to get out of China
and this latest incident is kind of acting as a
springboard so that they can. Yeah, it's like an unforeseen
exit strategy, like, oh yeah, let's take it. Take this
(15:21):
opportunity to get the heck out of dodge. UM, we
don't know if if other companies are going to follow suit.
I mean, one thing about Google leaving China is right now,
it's like the best move they can make because they
are not number one, They're not They're not gonna lose
a huge amount of revenue by getting out of China
right now, but they are going to get a huge
PR boost by saying, look, we're gonna do what's right
(15:44):
because we either want to provide uncensored search results or
we don't want to work there at all. That's like
a really nice high moral ground to that you can
you can cling to and UH, whether or not it's genuine,
it's kind of beside the point. It's a huge PR
win for Google. So it puts pressure on other American
companies UH and other international companies companies like Yahoo and
(16:06):
Microsoft that's still operate within China and are still operating
under China's rules. UM saying like, well, now these companies
have to ask the question do we stay in China?
UH playing but playing the playing ball with the Chinese
government continuing to obey the rules of censorship and UH
and and accept the fact that that's going to be
(16:28):
awful PR back in the rest of the world. But
we'll do it, you know, We'll make that sacrifice because
there's all that money over there. Or are they going
to say, you know what, we're gonna pull up stakes
too because the heat is too high, or maybe even
they genuinely feel that the business they're doing in China
is ultimately more harm than good. Uh. You know, I
(16:49):
don't want to paint all of these these executives as
being these cold hearted, calculating money grubbing kind of jerks. UM.
I don't know any of them personally. Some of them
may feel legitimately conflict did about doing business in China, UM,
And maybe they are taking the time to really re
evaluate their positions as well. I honestly don't know. UM.
(17:10):
I operate under assumptions and stereotypes the way everyone else does,
so I think of them as cold, calculating money grubbing jerks.
But I'm I hope I'm wrong. It would be great
if I were wrong. I don't Here's the real problem. Ultimately,
I don't know even if they were to all pull
up stakes and leave, I don't know that that would
(17:30):
put any leverage on the Chinese government whatsoever to make
any kind of changes it is. It is conceivable that
their their argument that by doing work in China, they
can gradually change the mind of the government to allow
more free speech and allow more flexibility. And we've seen
some evidence of that over the last few years. I
(17:50):
mean that it's not like China hasn't allowed any kind
of outside access, but they have been very very cautious
of it. And some of that is cultural, where it's
just that they want to protect the Chinese culture, and
some of it is very political. Um. And so it'll
be yeah. I mean, I think if even if all
the American companies that have anything to do with intellectual
(18:13):
property pulled out of China right now, I'm not sure
that China would really care that much. Yet. Um, in
some ways, China would Chinese government would want to react
because it's all about saving face in the global environment.
So but even in that case, it's more about saving face,
(18:35):
it's not about necessarily doing what's right. So yeah, we
know another situation, another political situation that involves technology that
that revolves around protecting corporate interests was net neutrality. UM.
And I was reading just just today that that Skype
(18:55):
has weighed in there there's still no decision on official
decision on net new reality. But Skype actually filed a
brief with the FCC not too long ago, actually in
January fourteenth, two thousand town UM basically saying sort of
coming down somewhere in the middle, saying it would net
neutrality would promote investment, jobs, and innovation. It's a quote, UM.
(19:18):
But Skype also sees the need to protect UH network
infrastructure and for UH companies UH Internet service providers to
throttle bandwidth, block programs if necessary, or degrade performance UM
in order to preserve the network and integrity and make
sure that they're able to provide equitable service. Of course,
(19:40):
they're also quick to point out that their application has
been optimized to you know, make as minimal and impact
on the network as possible, right, because it's all peer
to peer, right, so uh, you know, it's it's all
sort of relative. But that that battle has been hot
and heated between the people who say I don't want
I want to be able to act says everything equally
(20:02):
UM here in the United States on my Internet service provider,
I don't care, I don't want it censored, I don't
want it throttled. I don't want it blocked. I don't
want it. You know, you don't taper it off. I
don't wannferential treatment for one versus the other. Meanwhile, some
of the Internet service providers are saying, look, you know,
if we can make a deal with a content provider, um,
you know, to help provide better service for our customers
(20:24):
as a whole, we're willing to give them a little
bit extra bandwidth, you know, or we're gonna throttle your
slit torrent connection because you know, you are one of
the point zero five percent who uses most of our
bandwidth because you download movies all the time. You maybe
BitTorrent is not just used to download movies. No, it
(20:45):
can be used to download anything but people. I was
just making an example, but you're right, No bittorring could
be used to download anything. Legal problem is that there
are a lot of people who do use it for
illegal purposes, and so that's bad for that. And you
know what, I'm sure if I looked at the full
(21:05):
list of all people who use bit torrent, it would
probably be a sizeable percentage that uses it for illegal
purposes at least occasionally, if not regularly. Um, it's a
very effective method for delivering files, whether they're legal or
But yeah, if you were to just automatically throttle all
bit torrent activities exactly, that would faally hurt people who
(21:26):
are using it for legitimate means to distribute very large files.
I mean, if you're using it for work purposes in
your house and you needed to share files with other
people in your office, Um, you know, in your your
bandwidth is being throttled by somebody else who uses even
more bandwidth than you, and you're being lumped in with them.
You know you're gonna be a little outraged by that.
(21:47):
So we're seeing a lot of web companies weigh in
on this discussion. So this is another good, good example
of web companies in politics. I mean, Google has been
extremely vocal in the whole net neutrality argument and uh
then of course we've also seen I s p s
and UH like cell phone carriers in particular argue the
opposite side, saying things like, hey, we just want to
be able to give the best service and get lots
(22:09):
of money in charge twice for the same content delivery system. Again,
they are also trying vast they're also trying to provide
value to their stockholders and stockholders are, as we have
determined already the most evil people on the planet, Thank
you very much. I own stock By the way, I
also have plans for a death star. That's a good point. Yeah,
(22:32):
I'm just saying no, no, no, no, I don't really
mean that. I don't really mean that stockholder is necessarily evil.
Stockholder is not necessarily evil. You're just mostly evil. Um No, no,
I really, I really honestly don't believe that. But there
are a lot of people who hold a lot of
shares who do sacrifice, uh don't make sacrifices on on
(22:57):
principles in order to make more money. And there are
people who abuse networks to right sure, and then of
course there are plenty of sharehold result there who who
argue for the other way. They argue that, no, we
need to do the responsible thing. And yes, it may
mean that we don't earn as much in the short term,
but in the long term will make much larger returns
on our investments. So it makes more sense for planning
(23:19):
out for years in advance. So unless you're planning on
cocking it in the next couple of years and you're
just looking for some money to blow on all the
big parties you're gonna have before you kick it in
two thousand and twelve. Really not a big deal, all right, then, Yeah,
you don't really have any other political specifically. We know
we talked a lot about Google and China in particular,
(23:41):
but that's the that's a big one right now. And
it's a very good example of how a web company
can encounter some really sticky situations once they enter into
a country that has a totally different culture and political
system than the one that spawned that company. Well, actually
I was I'm not to count not to get into
this in depth, but um, the other big political uh
(24:05):
battle being fought is you know, over intellectual property and
copyright law. Um, and that's that's sort of what's going on.
And it's not exactly the same thing, but it's sort
of what's going on with the Chinese situation. Because these
things are are new, they're the technologies are have only
been around for a couple of decades, um, to the
point where everyone has adopted them in in in large numbers. Um.
(24:28):
They're proposing new issues for governments to have to deal with.
And you know, I think there will be massive changes
in government over time. But right now they're are producing
some serious, thorny issues that have never had to beat
addressed before. Yeah, and we're we can guarantee that we'll
keep our eye on this situation. And uh, if you
guys want to hear us have discussions on really timely
(24:51):
issues like uh this this podcast in particular is more
about the general issues of of web companies and and
uh politics, and we use the China Google thing is
an example. But if you want to hear us talk
more about this sort of stuff and a timely fashion,
I highly recommend you check out tech Stuff Live, which
we do every week. It's on Tuesday's at one pm Eastern,
(25:12):
and you can actually access the older episodes of Tech
Stuff Live. There's a youth stream channel that archives all
of them. You can also see our other live programs
archived versions of our live programs, not just tech stuff
but stuff you should know and there will be others
to follow in the future. So um, plus, we we
write about these things two on our blogs dot com
(25:35):
and UM you know we're we're able to address those
a little bit more timely fashion. Right, So if you
find these kind of discussions interesting and if you want
to participate in these discussions. We highly recommend you visit
the blogs. There are areas to comment on the blogs,
and uh, we definitely like to have that kind of
involvement and that that deep conversation start because clearly, I mean,
we have our own opinions, but but we know that
(25:58):
all of you out there have your opinions. Of you
may have lived in in countries like China and have
a unique perspective on the issue, and you're probably screaming
right now. I want to add my voice to the conversation.
The blogs are a good place to do that, and
of course you can always write us. You can email
us at our wonderful email and just tech stuff at
how stuff works dot com. And uh, we look forward
(26:18):
to hearing from you. But this has been an interesting discussion.
It's one of the heavier topics that we've tackled. But
after talking about our favorite tech movies and Easter eggs,
I felt that probably do yeah, we were do for
some something that had a little more substance to it.
So definitely email us, check out our blogs, and Chris
and I will taught to you again really soon. For
(26:42):
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everyone,
and welcome again to tech stuff. My name is Chris Philette,
(00:20):
and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
works dot com. And as he often does on these occasions,
sitting across from me is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Major though.
Right then, so uh let's talk politics, yeah, you know,
because that's what we normally talk about. Tech stuff is
all about the politics. And we're not talking PC versus
MAC people. Um, although we could talk PC versus Mack people.
(00:45):
I mean, I don't have any research on it, but
I like John Hodgman frankly that that's sort of a
political topic to right, we're really looking at all. Right,
So the web is a global entity, Okay, so we're
talking about the you know, the web is all over
the world, and there are web companies that have a
presence now all over the world. You might the web
(01:07):
is really made it a lot easier to become a
multi national global organization. Uh, you know, back in the
the good old days of the eighties. Um, you pretty
much had to be a mega corporation to have any
sort of presence outside of your country of origin. You
might have a few sites in and uh, you know,
(01:28):
another country, but um, it was only a few companies
that really had a global presence. Well, now with the Web,
everyone kind of has a global presence, whether they like
it or not. Right, and some of these companies don't
like it. We'll get to that. But part of the uh,
the flip side of the coin of having a global
presence is having to deal with global politics. And uh,
(01:50):
not every country treats the web the same way that
we in the West do. No, I say we because
you know I live in the United States. That's really
where my frame of reference is. The way the United
States handles the Internet and the Web. Actually not even
all Western nations, that's true. That's true. So so companies
(02:10):
that have a presence in various countries, especially any anyone
that is trying to generate revenue in these countries. Uh,
they may find that they have to operate under a
different set of parameters and they had originally intended and
in some cases this comes into direct conflict with the
company's philosophy. And um, I wasn't sure about all the
(02:33):
different things you wanted to talk about, but I think
the bulk of this conversation would really center around Google
and China because it's a great example of how a
a multi national company can have some problems within one
single country and what could lead to it deciding to
no longer do business there. Now, just there's a bit
(02:53):
of clarification, especially for those of you who are catching
up on our podcast now. A lot of you like to,
you know, when you first tune in, go back and
listen to earlier episodes. So as we are recording this,
we're actually in the throes of conversation about what has
happened over the past few days in our time UM
(03:15):
with an attack on Google's servers. Apparently it just came
out today the day we are recording this, that the
attack came from a computer in Taiwan, UM and what
happened was, UH, emails containing PDF attachments went out to people,
UH from many different organizations. Uh. They are apparently about
(03:36):
thirty three different companies, including Google, where people individuals received
emails with these PDF attachments. Well, the PDFs were exploiting
a zero day vulnerability, which means unpatched. Basically, UH hole
in the back of the UH Adobe Acrobat reader code.
(03:56):
And what that allowed UH the attackers to do was
essentially reroute traffic from the affected computers with they trojan
what they call a trojan horse. It appears as one
thing in this case of PDF, but contains malware. UM
and UH they were able to take UM intellectual property
(04:17):
from in this case what we're talking about mainly Google
and the Gmail servers. Now, um it it affected a
lot of people obviously, UM. But Google has been the
most outspoken as of this date, UM and said, look,
as a result of this, we are not going to
(04:38):
comply with the censorship requirements that the Chinese government has
put on us, which is causing a great bruhaha in
countries all over the world right now. To give a
little more perspective, China does have some pretty strict restrictions
on what the citizens of China can and cannot access.
That may be the biggest understatement you've spoke in this year. Yeah, alright,
(05:01):
So China likes to keep a very firm grip on
what the Chinese citizens are China. When I say China, mainly,
I'm talking about this shorthand for Chinese government. So the
Chinese government likes to keep a tight grip on what
the citizens can access, uh so much so that there
is a a h the Great Firewall of China. It's
(05:23):
something that we all refer to outside of China. Um
the Great Firewall of China is this this firewall that
blocks incoming data that the Chinese government doesn't want citizens
to access. This ranges from everything from pornography too, anything
that criticizes the politics and policies of the Chinese government,
(05:45):
including things like its position on tibet Um. There are
things are just considered taboo within Chinese culture that stuff
is blocked. And then there's the stuff that the government
just doesn't want citizens to have access to that gets blocked.
To Yes, that information like Tienamen Square. That's a huge one,
and so go ahead. I wanted to point out, though,
(06:06):
just as a as a point of clarification, that the
person who wrote this actually came out on Google's blog.
It was written by David Drummond, who is the senior
vice president and of Corporate Development and the chief Legal
officer of Google, and he pointed out, we don't know
whether or not the Chinese government is actually involved with this.
There's no way to tell for sure who is who
(06:27):
was the attacker in this case. Yeah, but if you
read between the lines, it is essentially saying that we
can't be certain, but we're you know, I would say that,
I would say that the reasonable interpretation of reading any
of the reports suggests that ultimately the Chinese government had
something to do with these attacks. Put it this way,
(06:49):
we haven't mentioned I just realized we haven't mentioned one
of the things that might lead them to believe that
what the information was. Yes, the information actually the the hackers, Um,
we're targeting accounts of Chinese non Chinese dissidence. Yeah, people
who were advocating for human rights within China. That was
it was their information, and as far as we can tell,
(07:09):
it wasn't like their emails or their documents or anything.
It was more just who they were and you know,
where they were really well, and which is bad enough.
So it could honestly could have been somebody who wanted
to make it appear as that the Chinese government was
behind it, but also could have been the Chinese government.
(07:31):
What motive would would anyone have to frame the Chinese government?
Why would they need that information. I mean, it doesn't
make sense. I think it was it. He's notorious like that.
I'n't going to take a little moment here and think
about pie Um. So I wanted to mention here about
the the whole Google China event. Google going into China
(07:52):
in the first place was kind of a sticky situation.
The reason being is that Google has an informal motto
that says, don't be evil, all right, and they define
that motto within their investor relations page as meaning a
couple of different things. One of the things they mean
is that they want to provide their customers with unbiased information.
(08:13):
So when you put in a search result in Google,
you should get unbiased search results, right, you shouldn't. You
shouldn't be getting uh you know, these are the ones
that Google thinks are best or they have a deal
with this company, and so their search results are going
to come back to you, and other search results from
competing companies won't come back to you. That is against
Google's policy. So you should whenever you put in a
(08:35):
search query, you should get unbiased information and return. Their
second tenant and don't be evil, is to operate within
the boundaries of the law. So Google can't do something
that's illegal. Even if they think that this is quote
unquote right, Um, they wouldn't do it because it's against
the law. Instead, they would lobby to have the law change.
(08:57):
They would work, you know, in a in a legal
manner to have the whatever it was removed so that
they could operate the way they wanted to. David Drummond
has actually made that clear that as of again as
of the date we're recording, is Google wants to work
with the Chinese government to find a way that it
can deliver search results in China without censoring the material.
(09:18):
And yeah, right, Well that was the point, was that
back when Google first got into China, those two tenants
of don't be Evil were at odds with each other
because they could not provide unbiased information to customers in
China and operate within the parameters the law. The two
things were at odds. There was no way you could
do both at the same time. You could either do
(09:40):
it illegally where you're providing uncensored search results, which would
just mean that the Chinese would eventually filter out your
site and no one would have access to it anyway,
or you would have to play ball with the Chinese
government and filter your search results to remove any links
to things that the Chinese government deemed inappropriate for the
citizens to see. So the was no way that they
(10:00):
could follow their own motto by going into business in China.
But at the same time, they said, you know, we
think that being able to provide some information is better
than not being able to provide any information. So we're
willing to take a chance and operate within China, see
what happens, and if the situation goes for the worst,
then we will reevaluate our position within China. And that's
(10:22):
kind of what seems to have happened over this past week.
And uh, it should be pointed out too that China
is not exactly a small market for Internet users. So
there are at one report I saw states that there
are around three d fifty million people who use the
web on a regular basis in China, and that number
is growing, and that's actually getting to the point where
(10:44):
it's it's eclipsing the United States. No small market, so
it's it's going to be hard for people like Microsoft
and Yahoo just to walk away and ignore them. Now,
on the flip side of that coin, you could argue
that Google itself is not a big player within the
search engine space in China, which is true now in
(11:04):
the United States, Google has the majority of the market
share in search. I mean it's like sixty something percent.
It's crazy amount of considering how many companies are out
there that provide search. In China, it is I think
in third or fourth place. Uh there's a Chinese government. Uh, well,
it's an organization that is friendly with the Chinese government.
(11:24):
I'm not sure that is state sponsored, right, Okay, but
there's Yeah, there's a search engine that within China cooperative,
its cooperative with the government. That is then the number
one space. Right, So bay Do is number one in China.
Google is is trailing behind bay Do, but is catching up.
(11:45):
It is made up some ground. However, some people have
pointed out that since Google isn't the number one, they
don't have the same kind of stock in China that
they would in other countries. It's easier for them to
pull up stakes and leave because they're not abandoning a
huge market the way they were they would be if
they were in the United States. So the question is
if Google were the number one search engine in China
(12:07):
and this had happened. Would Google still make the same
move of saying, you know what, you have violated our trust.
We weren't really sure about this or this situation in
the first place when we came in here, we're gonna leave.
Would they be able to do that if they were
number one, would they be able to to to say
goodbye to all that money? Part of that question is
hard to answer, just because Google has to answer to
shareholders and shareholders as a whole. I don't mean to
(12:30):
paint all shareholders with the same brush, because I know
it's not the case. But there's there's kind of a
general rule of thumb, which is that shareholders are willing
to put up with a lot if it means that
they're going to get a return on their investment. And
that may even mean, say, you know what, I understand
that this violates principles that you hold dear, But at
(12:51):
the same time, we're making lots of money. So as
long as we're able to make that money, we will,
you know, just kind of look the other way on
the whole human its issues and censorship issues. Um, I
don't know if Google would have been able to walk
away and Google, let me be clear, at the time
we're recording this, Google hasn't walked away yet. Um, but
(13:11):
they have said that they are willing to pull up
stakes and leave the country if they are not able
to come to some sort of agreement with the Chinese government,
and the Chinese government, for its part, so far, as said,
we're not in the wrong here. We have these rules. Google.
You either obey these rules or you don't work within
our country. So it's kind of a standoff right now.
We have to see whether or not Google is going
to make good on its threat to to leave. Uh.
(13:33):
I'm very curious to see how this affects the landscape
in China if Google were to leave, and actually the
global landscape really when you think about it. There was
an article in the New York Times too that it's
very very curious because the Chinese people are aware that
something is going on with Google, but they are unaware
that it revolves around any arguments surrounding free speech. Um. Well,
(13:56):
that's what happens when your speech is controlled, right. Uh.
But there has been um an outpouring of sympathy for Google.
People have been coming to the headquarters in Beijing and
leaving flowers and candles and other mementos. Uh. So you know,
(14:17):
just all kinds of people have been dropping by, which
is not something that I would necessarily expect to see. Uh.
For the third or fourth place, um, uh, you know
search engine in China, I have the feeling that some
people may know more than they may be letting on. Well,
(14:37):
it is known that there are plenty of people in
China who are using various services to get around the
firewall and are accessing information that is verboten in uh
in China. Um, there are plenty of people who are
using proxy servers and things like that in order to
get access to more information than they otherwise would be
allowed to to see. So some of that might be
(15:00):
coming into play. Um. Yeah, it's kind of hard to
say without without being there and knowing the whole situation,
Like we can't, for instance, we don't know if Google's
motives are really pure. We don't know if Google has
been looking for a while to get out of China
and this latest incident is kind of acting as a
springboard so that they can. Yeah, it's like an unforeseen
exit strategy, like, oh yeah, let's take it. Take this
(15:21):
opportunity to get the heck out of dodge. UM, we
don't know if if other companies are going to follow suit.
I mean, one thing about Google leaving China is right now,
it's like the best move they can make because they
are not number one, They're not They're not gonna lose
a huge amount of revenue by getting out of China
right now, but they are going to get a huge
PR boost by saying, look, we're gonna do what's right
(15:44):
because we either want to provide uncensored search results or
we don't want to work there at all. That's like
a really nice high moral ground to that you can
you can cling to and UH, whether or not it's genuine,
it's kind of beside the point. It's a huge PR
win for Google. So it puts pressure on other American
companies UH and other international companies companies like Yahoo and
(16:06):
Microsoft that's still operate within China and are still operating
under China's rules. UM saying like, well, now these companies
have to ask the question do we stay in China?
UH playing but playing the playing ball with the Chinese
government continuing to obey the rules of censorship and UH
and and accept the fact that that's going to be
(16:28):
awful PR back in the rest of the world. But
we'll do it, you know, We'll make that sacrifice because
there's all that money over there. Or are they going
to say, you know what, we're gonna pull up stakes
too because the heat is too high, or maybe even
they genuinely feel that the business they're doing in China
is ultimately more harm than good. Uh. You know, I
(16:49):
don't want to paint all of these these executives as
being these cold hearted, calculating money grubbing kind of jerks. UM.
I don't know any of them personally. Some of them
may feel legitimately conflict did about doing business in China, UM,
And maybe they are taking the time to really re
evaluate their positions as well. I honestly don't know. UM.
(17:10):
I operate under assumptions and stereotypes the way everyone else does,
so I think of them as cold, calculating money grubbing jerks.
But I'm I hope I'm wrong. It would be great
if I were wrong. I don't Here's the real problem. Ultimately,
I don't know even if they were to all pull
up stakes and leave, I don't know that that would
(17:30):
put any leverage on the Chinese government whatsoever to make
any kind of changes it is. It is conceivable that
their their argument that by doing work in China, they
can gradually change the mind of the government to allow
more free speech and allow more flexibility. And we've seen
some evidence of that over the last few years. I
(17:50):
mean that it's not like China hasn't allowed any kind
of outside access, but they have been very very cautious
of it. And some of that is cultural, where it's
just that they want to protect the Chinese culture, and
some of it is very political. Um. And so it'll
be yeah. I mean, I think if even if all
the American companies that have anything to do with intellectual
(18:13):
property pulled out of China right now, I'm not sure
that China would really care that much. Yet. Um, in
some ways, China would Chinese government would want to react
because it's all about saving face in the global environment.
So but even in that case, it's more about saving face,
(18:35):
it's not about necessarily doing what's right. So yeah, we
know another situation, another political situation that involves technology that
that revolves around protecting corporate interests was net neutrality. UM.
And I was reading just just today that that Skype
(18:55):
has weighed in there there's still no decision on official
decision on net new reality. But Skype actually filed a
brief with the FCC not too long ago, actually in
January fourteenth, two thousand town UM basically saying sort of
coming down somewhere in the middle, saying it would net
neutrality would promote investment, jobs, and innovation. It's a quote, UM.
(19:18):
But Skype also sees the need to protect UH network
infrastructure and for UH companies UH Internet service providers to
throttle bandwidth, block programs if necessary, or degrade performance UM
in order to preserve the network and integrity and make
sure that they're able to provide equitable service. Of course,
(19:40):
they're also quick to point out that their application has
been optimized to you know, make as minimal and impact
on the network as possible, right, because it's all peer
to peer, right, so uh, you know, it's it's all
sort of relative. But that that battle has been hot
and heated between the people who say I don't want
I want to be able to act says everything equally
(20:02):
UM here in the United States on my Internet service provider,
I don't care, I don't want it censored, I don't
want it throttled. I don't want it blocked. I don't
want it. You know, you don't taper it off. I
don't wannferential treatment for one versus the other. Meanwhile, some
of the Internet service providers are saying, look, you know,
if we can make a deal with a content provider, um,
you know, to help provide better service for our customers
(20:24):
as a whole, we're willing to give them a little
bit extra bandwidth, you know, or we're gonna throttle your
slit torrent connection because you know, you are one of
the point zero five percent who uses most of our
bandwidth because you download movies all the time. You maybe
BitTorrent is not just used to download movies. No, it
(20:45):
can be used to download anything but people. I was
just making an example, but you're right, No bittorring could
be used to download anything. Legal problem is that there
are a lot of people who do use it for
illegal purposes, and so that's bad for that. And you
know what, I'm sure if I looked at the full
(21:05):
list of all people who use bit torrent, it would
probably be a sizeable percentage that uses it for illegal
purposes at least occasionally, if not regularly. Um, it's a
very effective method for delivering files, whether they're legal or
But yeah, if you were to just automatically throttle all
bit torrent activities exactly, that would faally hurt people who
(21:26):
are using it for legitimate means to distribute very large files.
I mean, if you're using it for work purposes in
your house and you needed to share files with other
people in your office, Um, you know, in your your
bandwidth is being throttled by somebody else who uses even
more bandwidth than you, and you're being lumped in with them.
You know you're gonna be a little outraged by that.
(21:47):
So we're seeing a lot of web companies weigh in
on this discussion. So this is another good, good example
of web companies in politics. I mean, Google has been
extremely vocal in the whole net neutrality argument and uh
then of course we've also seen I s p s
and UH like cell phone carriers in particular argue the
opposite side, saying things like, hey, we just want to
be able to give the best service and get lots
(22:09):
of money in charge twice for the same content delivery system. Again,
they are also trying vast they're also trying to provide
value to their stockholders and stockholders are, as we have
determined already the most evil people on the planet, Thank
you very much. I own stock By the way, I
also have plans for a death star. That's a good point. Yeah,
(22:32):
I'm just saying no, no, no, no, I don't really
mean that. I don't really mean that stockholder is necessarily evil.
Stockholder is not necessarily evil. You're just mostly evil. Um No, no,
I really, I really honestly don't believe that. But there
are a lot of people who hold a lot of
shares who do sacrifice, uh don't make sacrifices on on
(22:57):
principles in order to make more money. And there are
people who abuse networks to right sure, and then of
course there are plenty of sharehold result there who who
argue for the other way. They argue that, no, we
need to do the responsible thing. And yes, it may
mean that we don't earn as much in the short term,
but in the long term will make much larger returns
on our investments. So it makes more sense for planning
(23:19):
out for years in advance. So unless you're planning on
cocking it in the next couple of years and you're
just looking for some money to blow on all the
big parties you're gonna have before you kick it in
two thousand and twelve. Really not a big deal, all right, then, Yeah,
you don't really have any other political specifically. We know
we talked a lot about Google and China in particular,
(23:41):
but that's the that's a big one right now. And
it's a very good example of how a web company
can encounter some really sticky situations once they enter into
a country that has a totally different culture and political
system than the one that spawned that company. Well, actually
I was I'm not to count not to get into
this in depth, but um, the other big political uh
(24:05):
battle being fought is you know, over intellectual property and
copyright law. Um, and that's that's sort of what's going on.
And it's not exactly the same thing, but it's sort
of what's going on with the Chinese situation. Because these
things are are new, they're the technologies are have only
been around for a couple of decades, um, to the
point where everyone has adopted them in in in large numbers. Um.
(24:28):
They're proposing new issues for governments to have to deal with.
And you know, I think there will be massive changes
in government over time. But right now they're are producing
some serious, thorny issues that have never had to beat
addressed before. Yeah, and we're we can guarantee that we'll
keep our eye on this situation. And uh, if you
guys want to hear us have discussions on really timely
(24:51):
issues like uh this this podcast in particular is more
about the general issues of of web companies and and
uh politics, and we use the China Google thing is
an example. But if you want to hear us talk
more about this sort of stuff and a timely fashion,
I highly recommend you check out tech Stuff Live, which
we do every week. It's on Tuesday's at one pm Eastern,
(25:12):
and you can actually access the older episodes of Tech
Stuff Live. There's a youth stream channel that archives all
of them. You can also see our other live programs
archived versions of our live programs, not just tech stuff
but stuff you should know and there will be others
to follow in the future. So um, plus, we we
write about these things two on our blogs dot com
(25:35):
and UM you know we're we're able to address those
a little bit more timely fashion. Right, So if you
find these kind of discussions interesting and if you want
to participate in these discussions. We highly recommend you visit
the blogs. There are areas to comment on the blogs,
and uh, we definitely like to have that kind of
involvement and that that deep conversation start because clearly, I mean,
we have our own opinions, but but we know that
(25:58):
all of you out there have your opinions. Of you
may have lived in in countries like China and have
a unique perspective on the issue, and you're probably screaming
right now. I want to add my voice to the conversation.
The blogs are a good place to do that, and
of course you can always write us. You can email
us at our wonderful email and just tech stuff at
how stuff works dot com. And uh, we look forward
(26:18):
to hearing from you. But this has been an interesting discussion.
It's one of the heavier topics that we've tackled. But
after talking about our favorite tech movies and Easter eggs,
I felt that probably do yeah, we were do for
some something that had a little more substance to it.
So definitely email us, check out our blogs, and Chris
and I will taught to you again really soon. For
(26:42):
moral this and thousands of other topics is a how
stuff works dot com and be sure to check out
the new Tech stuff blog now on the house stuff
Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
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