VII. You shall not steal (source code)
Posted on January 18, 2010 by Marek
Nearly three years ago I wrote about how the shareholders of Google’s decided that the company should censor search results in China and thus to fight for the Chinese market. What has happened is that the Mountain View company changed its mind?In May 2007, David Drummond argued that the withdrawal from China and the eradication of Google.cn is not what should be done, and would be so if Google gave up censoring search results as he wants the Chinese government and the law.
Google, however, wasn’t the only company that tested ethics in business. To respect Chinese law (which in practice meant for example, assistance in punishing the Chinese opposition) agreed other big companies like Yahoo, Microsoft.
Chinese market has become the litmus test for ethic of companies. A properly presence there, which for some meant turning a blind eye to the slave work for the other to provide evidence for the Chinese courts. The presence in the Chinese market gives profits and also gave it considerable profits.
Less than three years after Google reiterated its decision to censorship of search results the same David Drummond posted on the official blog of Google’s article entitled “A new approach to China“:
“We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to 
information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China. (…) We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”
Changing Google approach to censor had been caused by hackers attack to among the others Gmail accounts belonging to Chinese opposition. As it turned out, burglary, had to be inspired by the Chinese government. At least, say scientists at the laboratory of VeriSign iDefense and McAfee.
The Chinese Government sees no problem, of course and invites to cooperation all companies that are ready to abide by Chinese law.
Into action the U.S. government joined and sent a protest through diplomatic channels. At this probably will end, because somehow it is hard to imagine imposing any sanctions on China.
I wonder however why Google decided to say out loud about the possibility of withdrawing from China. It also probably will end up on the words and Google will stay in China.
Google said loud:
- not because of the current revenue from the Chinese market because they are from 300 to 400 million dollars a year (depending on sources) at 20 billion annual revenue from all activities. These are not the money, the loss of a very hurt Google.
- not because of the current position of Google in China, because behind the Great Wall Baidu is the king (over 60% of Internet users use this search engine), and here it’s does not change quickly. Over 30% of Google is a good result, but still only half of Baidu’s market share. Google is more accustomed to the leadership.
It seems that Google hurt the most likely steal the source code and it would have been much greater loss than 400 million dollars. Of course, none of the Google does not endorse that information, but certainly many people puzzled over the security of their data. Google knows a lot about us, remains an open question – whether the hackers attacked, the Chinese government knows more, and what such knowledge can do this with? The answer to this question, however, perturbs the more American than Polish Internet users.
The possible theft of source code it’s not good for the image of Google. And right here I would search for the reasons for the behavior of representatives of business, and even involvement in the matter of American government. Overlooks the fact that lost something really valuable …
PS. Quite another story, deserving of decent case study (including but will certainly smarter than me and more versed in the subject of security) is the scale of cyber-attack which affected not just Google but other big businesses. Someone obviously said that rather than invest millions in optimizing your own code, it is better to invest one time in the acquisition of packaged software solutions and thus build a competitive advantage.
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