Have you heard about the Facebook’s Chinese version? 😛 It is called renren which means everyone. 😀 Renren is a social networking website in China.
Renren is a six-year-old company that is called as “the Facebook of China”. Well the news is it may be the first social networking site to go all public. It is estimated to have 22m active users, renren is the largest site of its kind in China.
Facebook may go public in may 2010, which is estimated to be $600 million. Along with this there are other websites also that are planning to go public including Twitter and YouTube.
What do you think ? Point is will Facebook really go all public or it’s just rumors ? What if Facebook wants to continue with its privacy. Share your views with me on this .
You might be aware of Google looking to get out of China because of reservations Google has on censorship and cyber attacks emanating from China which has prompted Google to think about closing down Google China. There were some debate in the past couple of months but finally as expected Google has finally acted on censorship in Google China.
How it started?
Google’s service Gmail had come under cyber attacks under which Google announced that certain accounts were hacked into to attack Chinese activist. Some of these activists are not in China and hence could open a can of worms legally speaking for Google. This is where Google started negotiating with China to take off censorship to its services.
Google uncensored search results for China…
Google yesterday re-routed their servers to host Google China or rather re-routed traffic from Google.cn to Google.com.hk which will give access to Chinese users to get unfiltered and uncensored results. Google claims that this is perfectly legal in their blog. They also have put up another webpage which shows which Google service in China is up and running. You can access that service by clicking here. At the time of writing this post, You Tube, Blogger and Google Sites was blocked completely.
What does this mean for Google?
Google is the first company to challenge censorship in such a direct way in China and that will be difficult. I think Google is taking this extreme step as too much of their systems are open to China so they can be monitored. This also renders the security of their services outside China as under scrutiny. In other words I think Google thinks if it toes the China line, they might be endangering their services outside China to Chinese hackers.
This might be quite a interesting development. What do you think? Will Google be completely shut out from China or will China finally cave in and give in to some demands of the internet giant.
A day after Google made public that they were under a well organized attack from Chinese hackers news has trickled in that certain Chinese hackers have targeted computers within the Government trying to snare many top level administrators. Apparently an email was sent to top level bureaucrats from a dormant email id. This allowed the hackers the opportunity to access a backdoor within the network for getting access to that computer’s hard disk.
According to the timing that these attacks coincided with the Copenhagen summit last year, there is a theory that Chinese hackers might have tried to get an idea of India’s stand before hand. The Prime Minister’s Office has confirmed about the attack on systems but noted that computers with sensitive material are sanitized and do not have access to the Internet.
Why China?
A lot of experts are saying China has a long term plan to use its cyber hackers to control the internet or atleast develop the ability to cause great harm. I think that idea is a little over stretched. China does have one of the most comprehensive system of monitoring and censoring content on the internet. It might soon have the highest number of Internet users but the content is very controlled. To acheive this sort of monitoring mechanism would need a huge number of hackers who are working round the clock trying to monitor the massive internet population.
This essentially gives some of these Chinese hackers an ability to be trying their hands at attacking systems and networks outside China. Whereas there is nothing wrong in being aware and vigilant about cyber security, I do not think it is correct to be too carried away with conspiracy theories that will soon start floating on the internet along with some parts of the print and television media.
The internet has been abuzz about Google threatening to end its operations in China as it fears their company websites have come under official attacks regarding security. Google in its blog discussing issues with China have claimed that they will now have a new way of dealing with China. Google.cn is the Chinese domain for Google. It has a huge subscriber base and as China is growing rapidly their internet usage has also grown manifold.
The Chinese government has had strict policy regarding internet censorship. It has a elaborate system which does clamp down on dissidents in various ways. Most companies look the other way and accept demands of the Chinese Government regarding sharing information and regulating content. Most companies like Microsoft and Yahoo have been criticized for their bowing to Chinese pressure for doing business in China. Many websites we consider harmless are often banned or blocked in China.
When Google entered China and created Google.cn it had initially accepted Chinese rules and a lot of experts claimed that Google had lost its innocence. All companies who do business in China do allow for greater censorship to their content by the government with usually the argument being you play by the rules that are present in the country.
Google – China mismatch
Google and China have always been a mismatch. Google essentially has done more than any internet company to free up information and make it very accessible. With complying to censorship in China, Google has probably compromised on its own culture. Google is one of the few companies who have first concentrated on functionality for users and then figured out ways around this functionality to make money. Small businesses and large businesses finally got the opportunity to contact individual users not with annoying email advertisements but through search. This system to work needs a big amount of openness and freeness to operate.
According to Google, China has managed to track and compromise security to an extent of certain individuals who were known dissidents or human rights activists. These cyber attacks were not just limited to Chinese citizens but also people in Europe and the US. Google has now started sharing information with various agencies on these attacks and will be discussing with China on a deal to go ahead and carry out their operations in China without any censorship. Google’s blog even goes to the extent that if it doesn’t work out they will have to shut their China operations which effectively close down Google.cn.
Another take on this controversy is if the Chinese state is unfairly targeting Google operations which benefit Baidu which is essentially controlled by Chinese government.
What do you think? Is it fair of Google to stand their ground and deal with China on their own terms or should Google accept the law of the land and work within that framework?
I personally think Google has a point here, as the internet is mainly a democratic and level playing forum for sharing information. Trying to control this forum will greatly harm its potential and hence internet should not be subject to censorship.
Now, that can’t be right! Wasn’t the Green Dam Software actually designed to filter pornography and violence from the Internet in China? According to a report, Chinese Web users testing the software have found that Green Dam is apparently blocking photos of babies, pork, actor Johnny Depp, Paris Hilton and even Garfield (Garfield?!? A cartoon cat? Oh come on, not all cats can wear clothes!)
The authorities seem to have gone a little too far.
International criticism
Thankfully, due to the international criticism it faced, China has backed down and officially announced a delay in the “mandatory installation of the filtering software- Green Dam Youth Escort on all new PCs in China.” We, however, do not yet know how soon this mandate will be restored. The software will probably be further improved, upgraded before it is made compulsory again.
The software will, however, be available for download from 1 July, i.e., today, and will be installed on computers in schools and internet cafes.
Bizarre results
Green Dam Youth Escort is basically a content-control software developed in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Under a directive from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the PRC, it was mandatory to have either the software, or its setup files pre-installed on, or shipped on a compact disc with, all personal computers sold in Mainland China, including those imported from abroad.
The software works by not only tracking key words but also color, leading to some off-the-wall results.
Security vulnerabilities
On 11 June 2009, Scott Wolchok, Randy Yao, and J. Alex Halderman from the University of Michigan located “various security vulnerabilities that can allow “malicious sites to steal private data, send spam, or enlist the computer in a botnet” and “the software makers or others to install malicious code during the update process”.
Buffer overflow vulnerabilities may occur when the software performs URL filtering or updates its blacklist filter files due to the use of fixed-length buffers.
It can corrupt the execution stack.
It can allow execution of malicious code.
The feature of automatic filter update opens door to the computer being remotely controlled by the software’s makers.
They recommended that users uninstall the software immediately for protection.
In addition to security vulnerabilities, Wolchok, Yao and Halderman also found that a number of blacklist files used by Green Dam Youth Escort were taken from the censorship program CyberSitter, from Solid Oak Software Inc.
More than $7 million has been spent by the Chinese Government in developing the Green Dam Youth Escort. If we were to go by the rumors, then the censorship officials have a financial stake in the company that produces it.
The government of China has accused Google of spreading pornography and vulgar content in the country, as a result, violating the nation’s law. People in China were temporarily unable to access the search engine, but it is still unknown whether Chinese government actions were responsible for these disruptions.
Foreign ministry spokesman, Qin Gang says:
“We have found that the English version of google.com has spread lots of pornographic, lewd and vulgar content, which is in serious violation of Chinese laws and regulations.”
Google asked to take action
Google has been asked to remove the content immediately and abide by all Chinese laws. Google have said that they would do more to stop users in China from accessing pornography.
China’s Web monitoring and Filtering System
China has the world’s most extensive Web monitoring and filtering system.
It is common to see access blocked to foreign sites in China.
Authorities closed more than 1,900 porn-related Web sites.
Google search market in China
China apparently has the largest population of Internet users – at about 298 million.
Google has about 30 % of the search market there, but has struggled to expand.
The company launched Google.cn with a Chinese partner after seeing its market share decline tremendously as government filters slowed access to Google.
If there were Oscars for the biggest tech buzz of the year, then Netbooks would have already won it for 2009. Sooner than anticipated by market watchers world over, Google Android on a Netbook, is now available.
Today morning, I posted about the recent Netbook market trends and how ASUS is developing a netbook based on Google’s Android platform. But leaving ASUS and others behind in the race, it’s a Chinese manufacturer – Skytone that has won the race.
Features:
Based on ARM-II 533MHz CPU, Skytone’s Alpha 680 netbook fancies a 7-inch flip-around display and is available in a variety of colors including Pink, Yellow and Red.
With only 1 GB of built-in solid-state memory, the built-in SD/MMC card slot shall come in handy.
To know the complete list of features/specifications, visit this page on Skytone
Zoom In:
I wonder how Yahoo got the view print in this official image release by Skytone.
Not to forget, the Skytone Alpha 680 Android netbook is expected to be priced in the range of $100 to $200. Let’s wait and see if the machine gets its way to India from China, before it could reach the US! I wish it does 😛
