It is ironic that one month ago I spent countless hours on the phone with law enforcement officials including the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding the hacking of a fairly high profile blog we manage for a client at Orangecast. In the end, we had a very successful blog that was getting hacked on a nightly basis and were sent a message from multiple law enforcement agencies that they were too overwhelmed with their workloads to provide any sort of real help. Having put forth a tiresome effort traversing PHP files looking for nasty embedded strings in our WordPress installation, it was the first time in my social media career that I felt like throwing in the towel on a challenge. Still, Jerod and I decided to take a smarter approach and have triumphed because of it. That is why when I read the news alert that Google is threatening abandoning its Chinese market presence over hacker attacks, I had to raise an eyebrow. With more monetary resources than most countries have and an employee base boasting unprecedented intellectual horsepower, I fail to see how hackers have gotten the best of the search giant. There must be something more.
Doing business in any foreign country can be challenging. Having conducted business in China on behalf of a major software company, I have experienced the challenges of China first hand. The most frustrating aspect of doing business in China is their lack of respect for intellectual property. Another aspect of Chinese culture that takes adjustment is their hard line way of imposing their views on western businesses which includes their views on censorship. Still, Google has assembled a staff of seasoned professionals to run their Chinese operations and these nuances of doing business in China are nothing new to them. Furthermore, the search giant is the target of global cyber attacks on a daily basis. So, I’m not sold that a hacking incident nor typical friction with the Chinese government is the foundation for Google’s threat to pull out of the market.
Hacking
Hacking is a growing problem. It isn’t like China is a harbor for hackers, however. There are hackers spread across the globe. This past week alone, How-To-Blog.TV was hit with fairly complex attacks from the following countries:
Attacks On H2B This Week
How do I know? We’ve incorporated some fairly complex software into our site that identifies attacks and blocks the attackers. (We are preparing an entire series on our experiences with this so stay tuned.) In making this statement, I realize that the magnitude of attacks against Google are exponentially higher than those against our blogs–so are the resources to combat them. Hacking isn’t the point of the post nor is it the real basis of Google’s threat to pull out of China. Google is threatened by the workload that the censorship of foreign governments would impose on their business model.
Google’s natural search engine is built upon the legal immunity provided by Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act. In summary, Google isn’t responsible for the content in its index. . .it is the responsibility of the owners of the sites they index. At least in the United States, this is the way the law works. Still, the views on this responsibility vary greatly in other countries. For example, the Italian government recently concluded a trial where Google executives were being held responsible for video content in their index. In Computer World’s coverage of Google’s trial in Italy, they quoted Peter Fleischer in saying,
“A guilty verdict in the trial might embolden politicians to broaden Web 2.0 companies’ editorial liability, making their activities economically unviable.”
In my opinion, this is the single biggest threat to the future of Google’s business model. Thus, I think it is fair game to speculate that Google’s publicity generating threat to exit the Chinese marketplace is simply using the hacking incident to establish leverage in their censorship debates with the Chinese government. In the process, they are sending a message to other governments. After all, this is like Orangecast threatening not to pay our taxes due to our displeasure with local, state, and Federal law enforcement’s response to attacks against our blogs.
How Does This Impact Your Blog?
Unless you have made the investment to feature content in Mandarin Chinese on your blog, your impact from Google’s challenges in China is minimal. However, as seen with Microsoft and AT&T, there is rarely short term upside in aligning with a company who chooses to battle a government. Thus, expanding your horizons in terms of how you connect with potential viewers of your blog is a good exercise. Both Jerod and Hannah will dedicate several post in the near future to this topic.
Summary
Google isn’t the first company to struggle in China. Reebok has fought counterfeiting there for years, Microsoft still struggles with piracy, and even domestic recycling efforts are challenged by Chinese policy. Google has a long way to go as political systems catch up with the disruptiveness that its business model has caused. Governments move slow. Google should direct its desire for swift action toward the global fight against hackers and curb the emotions caused by foreign governments. It is what is good for the Internet in the long term.
