Saturday, January 16, 2010

History of US Internet Companies Failing in China

I was disappointed by the lack of context offered by the mainstream media in the wake of Google's announcement that it may terminate its operations in China. Google itself explained it in (predictably) moral terms: as a protest against state-sponsored hacking and content censorship. The media seemed to buy, and propagate, that explanation wholesale. But the situation is certainly 'more complicated' than that self-serving justification alone suggests. The New York Times has an article today about the history of failure of US internet companies in China over the last 10 years, including some of our biggest names like ebay and Yahoo. You can read it HERE.

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