Microsoft Partners With Baidu, China's Top Search Engine 115
countertrolling writes with news that Microsoft has struck an agreement with Baidu.com, the most popular search engine in mainland China, to provide results for English-language queries. From the NY Times:
"Baidu, which dominates Chinese-language search services here with about 83 percent of the market, has been trying for years to improve its English-language search services because English searches on its site are as many as 10 million a day, the company said. Now it has a powerful partner. 'More and more people here are searching for English terms,' Kaiser Kuo, the company’s spokesman, said Monday. 'But Baidu hasn’t done a good job. So here’s a way for us to do it.' Baidu and Microsoft did not disclose terms of the agreement. But the new English-language search results will undoubtedly be censored, since Beijing maintains strict controls over Internet companies and requires those operating on the mainland to censor results the government deems dangerous or troublesome, including references to human rights issues and dissidents."
Embrace China, Extend cash and Extinguish dissent. (Score:4, Insightful)
Compliance isn't an excuse for assisting China. But what's a few dead, organ-harvested people under the bridge who voiced their opposition to the company town?
Re:Embrace China, Extend cash and Extinguish disse (Score:4, Insightful)
But what's a few dead, organ-harvested people under the bridge who voiced their opposition to the company town?
A business expense.
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> > But what's a few dead, organ-harvested people under the bridge
> > who voiced their opposition to the company town?
>
> A business expense.
That depends upon how much you get for the organs, doesn't it?
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This sort of thing is the reason I was in favour of lawsuits against companies in the 80's and 90's who'd profited from slave labour back in WWII.
If US companies now sense that dealing with nasty totalitarian states can result in an expensive lawsuit in the future it might make them a bit more wary of doing it.
As for Microsoft I'm the odd situation of disliking them intensely now on slashdot long after it was fashionable to do so. Back in the days when most people here hated them I actually didn't really ob
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As for Microsoft I'm the odd situation of disliking them intensely now on slashdot long after it was fashionable to do so.
On the bright side it means you may soon be able to get Google search results in China through Bing's innovative technology. ie copy paste.
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How far into the past do we have to go to punish people...
DNA can be thought of as just more cookies...but they only go so far. Do you know where your atoms have been?? Were you once part of a hostile volcano or an exploding star?
IBM sold their laptop division, now living through the Chinese brand Lenovo.
Maybe it's time for the search or better yet the OS portions of Microsoft to be sold too?
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Re:Embrace China, Extend cash and Extinguish disse (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Embrace China, Extend cash and Extinguish disse (Score:4, Insightful)
what about you taking the first step?
A good first step might for you to go to China and look for yourself.
It's not the hellhole some people try to portray it as being, and neither are all of it's factories sweatshops.
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It's not the hellhole some people try to portray it as being, and neither are all of it's factories sweatshops.
No kidding. What are foxconn workers earning now? An opulent $0.35 an hour? And they only have to work 14 hours days, six days a week. And they get a sponge bath once a week. Not to mention the luxurious 14" board they get to sleep on.
And to think, a lot of them consider suicide a better option. Buncha cry-babies.
Re:Embrace China, Extend cash and Extinguish disse (Score:4, Interesting)
So, what exactly have you done to not support Chinese? Do you buy products that have been only made and manufactured in the US, even if its higher price? Do you own iPhone or any other known mobile phone? Does any of your product read Made in China? Instead of blaming Microsoft for doing business with Chinese, what about you taking the first step?
Yes, it is good to recognize that oneself plays a part as a cog in the machinery. As a wise man once said:
"Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! .)
Aaow!
(Yeah-Make That Change)
Gonna Make That Change . . .
Come On!
(Man In The Mirror)
You Know It!
You Know It!
You Know It!
You Know . . .
(Change . .
Make That Change. "
But, it is also unfortunately the case that us little consumers don't really run the world. You and I, individually, might be on top of things, at least a bit, using our purchasing power for good, but on the whole, the notion that consumers rule is false. Even if they technically might, we actually don't, because we buy what they tell us to buy (not you and me individually, but all of us in aggregate).
The consumerist, vote-with-your-wallet-perspective is often useful, but one should not neglect to also look at it from the perspective that maybe the rich and powerful actually are running the show. (Besides, they have very large wallets and some of them have very many guns, even).
It is convenient for the superpowers and mega-corps if we think consumers have the power. And we do. That's the ingenious bit. It's just that the rich and powerful pervert our potentially rational choices with marketing and through better access to mass communication than the little gal has.
In addition to voting with the wallet, people should, in my opinion, feel free to keep bitching on /. about the bad things the powerful countries and corporations do. Even if they can't be bothered to wean themselves completely from the convenience of the big cheap teat that is made in china, backed by tyranny and systematized greed.
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But, it is also unfortunately the case that us little consumers don't really run the world. You and I, individually, might be on top of things, at least a bit, using our purchasing power for good, but on the whole, the notion that consumers rule is false. Even if they technically might, we actually don't, because we buy what they tell us to buy (not you and me individually, but all of us in aggregate).
The consumerist, vote-with-your-wallet-perspective is often useful, but one should not neglect to also look at it from the perspective that maybe the rich and powerful actually are running the show.
No, nobody is running the show. This is what happens when a movie has no director. It could be worse; we could have a director with an absolute crap vision.
We CAN vote with our wallets, we CAN make a difference. Start with yourself. Then go convince two other people to do the same. Spend some actual time at it. If you succeed then you will have achieved more than you did when you changed your own habits.
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The problem isn't China, it's the government. Refusing to buy Chinese products wouldn't help with their censorship, it would only leave their population poorer. But Microsoft is helping the censorship by complying with it, making it easier to enforce.
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So, what exactly have you done to not support Chinese? Do you buy products that have been only made and manufactured in the US, even if its higher price? Do you own iPhone or any other known mobile phone?
It wasn't any part of my decision to buy the phone, but HTC makes stuff in Taiwan (they are a Taiwanese company).
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Supporting China isn't necessarily a problem. I've done work for a Chinese manufacturer and I have no moral qualms about it. The difference is that they were an honest business. I wouldn't work for a Chinese company that actively engages in the censorship of the internet. That's a dishonest business.
This isn't a China = Bad issue. It's a censorship = Bad issue. Google had no problem doing business in China. They had a problem with censoring their search results.
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I'd love to buy North American goods but there are hardly any out there compared to "Made in China" goods. Finding stuff that is not made in China is actually pretty hard.
Someone should make a UPC scanner app that offers you "Made in XX" products as alternatives.
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Yeah, let's go 5th-grade-lunch-room on a country with a few billion people, that's a good idea. CHINA YOU'RE A MEANIE SO YOU CAN'T SIT AT OUR TABLE
It's people like you that start wars. Idiot.
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Talk about going 5th grade, read your idiotic comment.
Google (Score:2)
Google didn't have a problem with that until their servers got hacked.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/12/google-china-ends-censorship [guardian.co.uk]
I'm confused (Score:2)
Do you mean Beijing or Redmond?
You mean Peking or Redmond (Score:1)
I'm quite sure that Redmond hasn't done that badly to people working there.
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Re:Just 10 million english searches (Score:4, Informative)
That, or people in China speak Chinese.
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That, or people in China speak Chinese.
How about Mandarin or Cantonese?
Sorry, had to be pedantic.
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Correct, people in China often speak one of the two major forms of Chinese.
This seems sufficiently apparent, I'm not exactly sure what's meant to be pedantic about it. Redundant might be a better word.
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1) Majority of the searches done in China will be in say.... Chinese....
2) The population of English speakers in China is about 10 million (based on wikipedia). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
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No one outside of the Baidu management team actually believes that Baidu has anything like an 83% of the search market in China.
Re:Just 10 million english searches (Score:5, Insightful)
How many Chinese-language searches do you think you have in the US each day? Would be interesting, too, to see the number of English-language searches in Japan, say, or in Germany.
Most people, the world over, only ever see the part of the net that's in their own language. The idea of the net as a world-wide melting pot is pretty overstated. It's like a large cocktail party where everyone is in the same room, but clustered into separate groups that talk only to each other, mostly ignoring everyone else.
Re:Just 10 million english searches (Score:4, Interesting)
While you are probably mostly correct about people only ever seeing the part of the net that is in their own language, I find a disproportionate number of the sites that I visit to be in English, German, and Japanese. The English part is easily explained (I'm an English speaker in an English speaking nation, who uses English services), but the German and Japanese part isn't so easy to explain. This leads me to believe that there are dominant languages on the net, English is one of the and that probably explains why Baidu wants to improve their English language results.
(To go to that cocktail party analogy, people mostly cluster according to their language but they use a dominant language when they want to talk to other clusters.)
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Well, do you understand German or Japanese? Do you have a special interest (manga or anime for instance) that makes you seek out these foreign-language sites? In either case it makes you rather unusual.
Few people ever feel the need to talk to those other clusters. Few people have the ability, even if they wanted to. Most people do not speak any of the world languages as a second language after all. The few that can and want to connect with other webs - and they really are quite few - tend to act as bridges,
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This leads me to believe that there are dominant languages on the net, English is one of the and that probably explains why Baidu wants to improve their English language results.
English is certainly one of the dominant languages on the Net, but so is Chinese. The reason why you don't usually get Chinese search results in your queries is because the writing system is completely different, and so you don't get accidental matches or near-matches on keywords.
How many Engrish searches? (Score:2)
As badly as they butcher English on signs, I'd wonder if they'd do the same in searches.
Can we call it (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, just that its ring is more sinister in China. (Score:1)
Bing is the sound of the bullet striking metal after passing through the skull of someone who didn't have enough favor or cash to buy their freedom.
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A story about China? Somebody alert the jingoism brigade!
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Through currency manipulation and buying our debt, the Chinese government is actually subsidizing the US; they are helping us buy their bullets at their own expense.
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"Baidung"
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The new internet version of Ba-dum-tish?
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Well, at least somebody caught the original submission [slashdot.org]
In Other News... (Score:1, Insightful)
... Microsoft uses it's massive operating system/business software profits to buy it's way into yet another market.
Re:In Other News... (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, who else is gonna do it? Yahoo? Altavista? Google won't because they aren't exactly on good terms with China what with the censorship and the hacking. This isn't a case of MS getting into a market by leveraging its monopoly powers -- it's a case of MS getting into a market by lacking the morals found in other companies. If you're gonna bash them, at least do it for the right reason.
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Hahaha... Google and Yahoo are your shining examples? They were the first to bow down to China. (well, you sort of have a point about Altavista. I don't suppose Obsorne Computer doesn't do much business with China either)
Google might be on the outs with China lately, but that bad blood took some while to accrue.
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They (Score:4, Insightful)
When you deal with the Chinese, sooner or later they will backstab you.
And when you deal with Microsoft, sooner or later they will backstab you.
Who's going to reach for the knife first?
Dealing with China == Today's Faustian deal (Score:2)
China will just reach for the gun and not bother with the knife. Then it'll harvest Microsoft for its IP and dispose of the rest.
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And then Uncle Sam will ride in on a majestic bald eagle and spread jingoism across the land. Well, Uncle Sam was busy today with the fireworks and what not, but never fear, he sent his trusty sidekick sethstorm!
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Still fighting the Vietnam war, are ye?
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Not sure what that's even supposed to mean. I'm just calling sethstorm out on his jingoism.
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Wtf, my post's title got cut. It was supposed to read "They're a perfect couple".
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Who's going to reach for the knife first?
Probably more of a Crocodile Dundee moment. "You call that a knife? This is a knife."
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New anti-gravity? (Score:2)
This situation reminds me of the buttered toast & cats approach to anti-gravity [wikia.com].. :-)
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I just hope they wait for long enough to me to reach some popcorn.
Now, in a serious note, MS has no power against China. Not even them are that evil.
Bing. (Score:2)
remember, kids (Score:5, Funny)
Two evils only make a good when you multiply, not add.
This will kill open source in China (Score:2)
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If they are going to censor, they might as well censor open source products and tools. After working in China, I find Baidu does a very bad job of supporting Chinese language documentation for open source. Many programmers in China are very badly trained because they have only used Windoz. They know how push buttons and drag and drop to make software. Some have no idea how to really write code.
LabView in red and gold?
Be careful what you ask for.
Re:This will kill open source in China (Score:4, Interesting)
Opensorce is pretty much a dead concept in China already. They understand copying; but, why should they give credit to another person.
Further, sharing is not a Chinese value. Why should they make it easier for another person to compete with them?
Really, I work at a university in China. they are aware of the Western Linux and Opensource thing. They just have no interest in it. They do not understand the point of it; to them, it is simply based on an alien value system.
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In that they are no different from nearly everybody at the west.
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Not interested? In fact one university made a copy version of FreeBSD and claimed their own, while obtaining millons of dollars from the government.It's named QiLin, and is for defence research.They actualy baned Sourceforge for sometime with nation wide firewall just to fool the public. A company is also copying Android as we speak, it' named Ophone. Opensource was dead long ago in China, but for a different reason.
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Many programmers in China are very badly trained because they have only used Windoz. They know how push buttons and drag and drop to make software. Some have no idea how to really write code.
I think the problem is really that China is pushing far too many people into the fields of engineering and computer science. They don't have the educational infrastructure in place (thanks in large part to the Cultural Revolution) to support educating the amount of engineers and programmers they are producing. As such, quality suffers. They are trying to solve the problem by sending massive numbers of students abroad (and then bringing them back once they graduate), but if they're not careful the problem c
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think anyone who thinks the USA is bankrolling China has things a tad backwards.
America only looks rich because of all the borrowed money it spends.
Re:oh slashdot, (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to know an awful lot about the OP's lifestyle, spending habits and motivations. Projecting much?
There isn't anything nonsensical about an American being concerned with human rights. It's even less nonsensical if you believe Americans share some of the responsibility.
I suppose weakly rationalizing your own complacency isn't nonsensical either - it's just appalling.
Re:oh slashdot, (Score:4, Insightful)
So because we don't agree with China's government, we should starve their people by refusing to provide them with work? Nice logic.
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By the same logic, why should Microsoft discriminate against their people by refusing to provide them with better services?
Hence GP's point - if you complain about MS (or any other company) doing business with China, and yet buy goods manufactured in China for yourself despite having financial means to do otherwise, it's a hypocritical position.
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My phone is Korean, my appliances are Mexican, American, and Canadian, my furniture is Canadian and Danish, and the clothes I'm wearing are Honduran and Mexican.
Kaiser's working for Baidu now? (Score:3)
Interesting... though not as cool as what he did before [amazon.com]. :)
For a second i though about wasting my mod points (Score:2)
but Microsoft and China in one discussion triggers all reflexes to recklessly troll around....
incoming (Score:1)
Cue a slew of comments about life in China from people who've never been there
Full circle: Googles "do no evil" was aimed at m$ (Score:1, Interesting)
Google pull out of China because censorship is evil, so in steps m$, the outfit Google coined their motto from originally. But wait ... m$ don't have a search engine of their own, so can the Google servers take the load from them merely throwing up a wrapper round theirs? [blogspot.com]
As they say... (Score:2)
English Search Results (Score:2)
So, Google's now going to be providing English search results for China?
Baidu Is Not Google (Score:1)
I know why (Score:1)
Baidu Bing search: "Operating system"
1 result found.
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Torrents anyone (Score:2)
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If one is to believe that our world is interconnected, then it only provides a model where liberty is granted only to the few who have the cash to purchase it - instead of providing it to all who seek it.
China is a case of why you don't simply just go for business friendliness, but freedom for all citizens without regard to involvement in commerce.
...that you're apologizing for China. (Score:2)
N/T
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If one is to believe that our world is interconnected, then it only provides a model where liberty is granted only to the few who have the cash to purchase it - instead of providing it to all who seek it.
China is a case of why you don't simply just go for business friendliness, but freedom for all citizens without regard to involvement in commerce.
You must have missed the memo. Fascism is back in a big way - it's just that the government and industry traded places.
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