By Jackson West
Tom Lantos wins the first ever Two Dot Roundup Straight Shooter Award for Excellence in Calling Bullsh*t. The transcript of him going after Oracle, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo is classic, especially considering that he represents a number of their employees in California’s 12th Congressional District. Google’s arguments sound pretty hollow after that tongue lashing. But while congress is holding hearings, a team of Canadians at the University of Toronto are busy finding ways around the Great Firewall.
While we’re busy slapping Google around: George Kurtz hunts down confidential information using Google for the RSA Conference .. Icarus Diving muses on sociology and Google’s suggest-a-search .. Matt Haughey thinks Jeff Veen could be the design Messiah Google desperately needs .. and if you want to have lunch at the Google cafeteria with Jeff, you can either come up with a product that leverages AJAX and social networking, or just apply online.
Just 90 days after launching, Dipsie shuts down, Jeff Nolan spreads the “JBoss to Oracle for $485 million” rumor and Bob Pittman puts DailyCandy on the block for “$100 million or so” .. Flickr’s 100,000,000th photo conveniently features a cute baby .. “Pundit Driven Design (or PDD) is to technology as back-seat drivers are to the nation’s highway system” .. and culled from a flock of thousands: The goofy gadget of the week.
Jackson West, writes for SFist. He writes about Web 2.0 and other topics for GigaOm
Sorry, I gloss over posts like this that are obviously trying to cram as much stuff as possible into as little bit of space as possible. Good bye.
In absence of pushing serious trade policy restricting Chinese exports unless the Chinese regime loosen its press restrictions, Tom Lantos sound like a coward and a hypocrite. All heat, no light. Blame the Administration for the trade gap, and them shame those domestic companies trying to narrow it.
This is political theater, nothing more. Google.com still exists in parallel to google.cn, no nothing has measurably changed with Google’s move into China. Savvy internet users in China already know how to use proxy servers to get around the firewall.
Meanwhile, as sensationalist know-nothings take ill-informed cheap shots, they continue to monetize their sites with Google ads. You want to talk hollow arguments?
OK, so the govt. takes pot shots at the internet companies for helping China out. What exactly was their response when China invaded Tibet? What exactly was their response when China decided to park some tanks on the chests of some of their citizens in the Square?
Sure, its easy, when you have no skin in the game, to talk big, but fact is, the govt. could make a decision and companies could not do business in China (to say nothing of keeping companies from selling missiles to China.)
You don’t screw around with superpowers. Our govt. will talk (because that is what they are best at) but when it comes down to it, what China does in their part of the world is going to happen, just like if the US decided to jump ugly with Cuba, everyone else would talk, but they wouldn’t actually do anything about it.
You don’t screw around with superpowers period. Internet in China? Who do you think owns the pipes over there? Think its all free and nice, think there are any net neutrality discussions over there? Think again.