Yesterday I blogged about Google's heroic stand against China's censorship of the web and apparent massive espionage efforts to spy on Human Rights advocates: Enough's enough, Google threatens to pull the plug in China
Today an equally heroic gesture has been made in solidarity with Google by Yahoo. In a statement Wednesday, Yahoo said it's "aligned" with Google's reaction to the hacking that originated within China.
Yahoo's stake in China is much more significant to Yahoo as an asset then goole.cn is to Google, and that is very substantial. Yahoo retains a 39 percent stake in Alibaba that represents one of Yahoo's most valuable assets.
Alibaba.comoperates two key online marketplaces, an international marketplace and a China marketplace. The company's English-language international marketplace (www.alibaba.com) serves to bring together global importers and exporters from more than 240 countries and regions. The China marketplace (www.alibaba.com.cn) is focused on facilitating domestic trade within China. The company also operates a Japanese-language marketplace facilitating trade to and from Japan through an associated company.
The company claims that together the two marketplaces have more than 45 million registered users - 10.5 million in the international marketplace and 34.8 million in the China marketplace. As of mid-2009, Alibaba.com had more than 9,000 employees - the vast majority of whom are based in China.
The stakes are now very high and when you throw in the US governments officially announced support for the actions of Google this is turning into a very big deal, the kind of thing that can spiral out of control or actually cause real change.
your Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge, Langley, River Springs and surrounding areas Realtor
It will be interesting to see how this plays out... I am sure that you will keep me abreast of the situation. Have an excellent year!
I to would be interested in how this works out. Thanks for the info..
Darren, Donna & Larry: I have heard an ancient Chinese curse (not sure if its true) "May you live in interesting times"
It CAN cause real change... And it is very dangerous. But I think that Yahoo's response was more impressive. Being the second mover, they had the choice of leveraging the situation...
Maybe China is the only thing left between Google and Global Domination??
Interesting game of "chicken" going on here. We'll just have to wait and see who blinks first.
I believe that china will be ok with throwing them both out and taking over the market themselves. We in turn, should start throwing out everything made in China.
I read that Microsoft it staying. I think twice about buying something from China these days with the poor quality controls (lead etc). It will be interesting to see if China blinks.
Janice: I will have to look into that Microsoft aspect, MS is in big decline these days. Windows 7 isnt the big hit it was supposed to be, Bing isnt making any money. Maybe Bill thinks he can makes lots of money in China so he can give it back to them with his foundation!?