China Esquire

Like everyone else, I saw the headlines from this article at CNN entitled “ Report: China targets Web sites with ‘porn’ content“:

China has released a blacklist of 19 major online portals and Web sites, including Google and Baidu, that it claims provide and spread pornographic or obscene content, state media reported.

“The government will continue to expose, punish or even shut down those infamous Web sites that refuse to correct their wrongdoing,” Cai Mingzhao, deputy director of the State Council Information Office, said Monday at a teleconference

Authorities accused the portals, including Sina, Sohu and Netease, and the Web sites of either providing links to pornographic sites or failing to take down pornographic pictures after being notified by the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center.

The center said Google in Chinese had provided “a large number of links to porn Web sites” in search results for web pages and images. The center said it notified Google, but the company did not take any effective steps, according to Xinhua.

Cui Jin, a spokeswoman for Google China, told Xinhua that Google did not spread such items intentionally.

“Google is neither the owner of those Web sites and porn nor does it spread (that) information intentionally,” she said.

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Okay, not a law based, but more of a business conference.  It’s a lunch conference hosted by the Monterey Bay International Trade Association (MBITA) entitled “Market Your Website to the World!” and sponsored by Richard Schneider Enterprises (RSE) a leader in providing global translation and interpretation services with 27 years of experience, working in over 170 languages for many different industries.  I apologize for the very last minute notice.

The 2 hour event from MBITA’s own words:

This luncheon will explore translation, localization, internationalization and globalization in general and how these services help companies communicate throughout the world and what expertise is needed to create a well-translated and localized website.

Always a good thing for an MNC wanting to do business in China, or a Chinese business wanting to spread further.  I have seen terrible international websites where only the decent site is in the native language of the company’s HQ.  So I expect there to be good practice information.

Here’s the registration information.

Date Friday, June 20, 2008
Place Fuji Buffet – 525 Water St. Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Time Noon lunch to 1:30 pm, 11:30am registration
Price ONLINE REGISTRATION: $25 members; $35 non-members
(online registration until June 19 @ 5:00pm)
Pay at door: $30 members, $40 non-members (cash or
checks only)

RESERVATIONS REQUIRED
Contact the MBITA office at 831-335-4780 cristina@mbita.org

This is sort of a follow up on my previous post about networking tips for law students (see here), hence the title, but also in response to the fact that blogging made the cover of the California Lawyer Magazine this month. I found the main article to be a re-hash of most such articles because of the content:

• lawyer blogging is booming (a 3500% jump in 5 years, which is no surprise)
• attorneys have many reasons to blog: to build a reputation in a specialty, attract clients, monitoring a legal niche, starting a conversation with a community of interest, etc. (common sense, no surprise again)
• the downside of blogging (lawyers are often technophobes and trolls are annoying, nothing new)
• future of blogging (no real information, just some pretty lame speculation)

However, the magazine provided 7 tips for blogging. Since I had counseled law students to learn about blogging and start their own blogs (or join the staff of a blog which has multiple authors like Transnational Law Blog), I thought I would put up some excerpts of the tips:

1. THINK GLOBALLY
In blogging, even though it feels like you’re sharing your thoughts with an intimate circle of friends, remember that millions of Internet users around the world will be able to read-and react to-what you’ve written.

This is even more important if you are taking on an international niche–then you really do need to think globally.

2. MANAGE YOUR READING REQUIREMENTS
Everyone already has too much to read, and the popularity of blogs is an added burden. But to be a well-regarded blogger, you really need to keep up with what fellow bloggers are saying. “Blogs act as funnels,” says Kevin O’Keefe, president of Seattle consulting firm LexBlog. “It’s like you have an intelligence agent that puts things in perspective for you.”

It is possible to follow a dozen or two dozen blogs without taking too much time if you have RSS or a standard bookmark list that you check once or twice a day. No need to keep on reading a blog over and over because there will be new stuff eventually.

3. KEEP IT CIVIL
If you wind up in a heated online spat but aren’t familiar with the tone and behavior expected in the blogosphere, resist the urge to respond immediately.

4. JOIN THE CONVERSATION (BUT IGNORE THE TROLLS)
When someone blogs misinformation about you, your firm, or an issue you are involved in, you should go ahead and set the record straight online. “The remedy for false speech is more speech,” says JoAnne Speers, executive director and ethics program director of the Institute for Local Government in Sacramento.  However, if you encounter a rabid, screaming, and pertinacious blogger-often referred to as a troll-you might want to hang back.

Just common sense, though I slightly disagree with #4. One thing is that when “trolls” abound, in general, just let them be. That usually works well. It’s the debate that will keep them coming back. No debate, moderate their comments, and you will be just fine.

5. FOLLOW OFFLINE RULES ONLINE
For the most part, you can avoid getting in hot water while blogging. “Use the same standard of ethics and decorum that applies to any medium,” including a person-to-person conversation, Speers advises.

Remember you are a professional. If you are a to-be lawyer, what you say will be remembered by the lawyer blog community. It’s a small community. So be professional always.

6. ABANDON ANONYMITY
Although it may be tempting to launch an anonymous blog in which you can speak freely, keep in mind that anonymous bloggers rarely stay anonymous. “Eventually, you are going to get found out,” says Kristie D. Prinz, founder of the California Biotech Law Blog. Howell agrees. “It’s not that difficult to figure out who someone is,” she says. Just ask Rick Frenkel, a lawyer at Cisco Systems. Shortly after his anonymous blog-Patent Troll Tracker-was outed this year, two Texas patent attorneys sued Frenkel and Cisco for defamation. Cisco has since revised its blog policy.

As a law student, I think this is a definite must. You need to be known in the community, and anonymity will hurt you. Of course, this assumes you are writing an informative blog and not something like Anonymous Lawyer (by Jeremy Blachman I believe).

7. SPEAK FOR YOURSELF
A blog is not the place for corporate blather or marketing blasts-it’s a place of personality. Keep that in mind as you write, suggests J. Craig Williams, a Newport Beachbased litigator. “Blogging by committee is bland and dry,” he says. “What makes blogging successful is voice. The most important thing is to be yourself.”

I also disagree with #7. Some blogs do it quite well, so I don’t think that’s a reason to stay away from group blogs. You can still develop your personal voice in a committee blog, especially when your partners aren’t going to heavily edit your work.

I hope this helps!

We all know about Google’s prior foray into China and how Baidu took Google to school in the Chinese search business. (In case it isn’t clear, Baidu has taken everyone to school in China) But it seems like the American search engine companies want to duke it out in China with Baidu anyways. Google is trying to link its search with music, as reported in China Digital Times:

Two years after Google Inc. began a big push in China, Baidu.com Inc. continues to dominate the country’s Internet search market, thanks in significant part to a controversial and legally risky offering: searches for free, unlicensed music downloads.

Now, Google is preparing a counterstrike, according to people close to the situation. The U.S. search giant is in the late planning stages of a joint venture with a Chinese online music company that would permit it to provide free — licensed — music downloads in China…

Baidu has proved a brash adversary for the much larger Google, leveraging its status as hometown champion in China to beat the U.S. Internet giant at its own game. From the start, Baidu has boasted that its knowledge of China and the Chinese language would give it a natural advantage over foreign rivals.

Interesting strategy: promote search using free music. (though I wonder if it not just easier to use “free” pirated music to compete in China, though I am not advocating such a strategy) I don’t think Google will be the last American search engine to try to knock Baidu from its perch as I have heard from folks in other companies salivating at the thought of gaining Chinese search business (aka, ad revenue).

UPDATE: I should’ve posted an old article regarding Baidu and mp3s, which can be found here.

Very informative posting at Silicon Hutong today that refutes some of my thoughts earlier, that the Microsoft-Yahoo (what I lovingly call “Yacrosoft”) deal has no effect on China because of Yahoo’s failure in China. In my haste to deride the deal and proclaim it had no chance in China, I completely forgot about Yahoo’s investment in Alibaba. While I still want to say that I think this deal will have only a small effect there, the Hutong would disagree:

The prospects of Microsoft buying up Yahoo! are providing considerable titillation for those of us who love industry gossip, are suffering election fatigue, and who dream about being flies on the wall of Yahoo! board meetings.

What few of us have started to consider is what such a combination is likely to mean to China. Certainly, MSN will probably continue to operate as the #2 chat application (far behind Tencent’s QQ but a growing fave among office workers). Where it gets interesting is when we start to think about Yahoo! China.

Readers of this blog will need scant reminder that Yahoo! China is owned and operated by Alibaba. Along with a whole lot of other interesting things, Yahoo! owns 39% of Alibaba. If Microsoft buys Yahoo!, it becomes Alibaba’s largest shareholder.

Assuming Jack Ma and Steve Ballmer got along (there is no reason to think they wouldn’t), the Alibaba investment could be very interesting for Microsoft. In fact, it would provide them several potential avenues – the LEAST of which is the Yahoo! China property – for building their (indirect, but very real) opportunities in China.

Taobao.

Alipay.

Even Alimama.

Think for a moment what it would mean to have these properties backed not only by Jack Ma’s savvy dealmaking, but by the sheer muscle of Microsoft.

And think what it would mean to Microsoft to have Jack Ma as its leading advocate in China.

Finally, here is a question – what about Jack Ma as non-executive chairman of Microsoft China?

All very interesting possibilities that, if Microsoft takes the time and brainpower to focus on China in this process, make for some really interesting opportunities.

Food for thought.

I know this isn’t China specific news, but it was too big to pass up on: Yahoo and Microsoft combining to fight Google. From CNN Money yesterday morning:

Microsoft’s (MSFT, Fortune 500) bold 1980s-style bear hug of a merger offer for Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) is great news for all investors, not just Yahoo’s, who are getting a 62% premium.

Microsoft is making a calculated bet that adding Yahoo to its growing stable of its Internet assets is the company’s best chance at catching up to Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) in the online advertising race. And Microsoft is making this bet at a time when Yahoo is hurting. It is a savvy, opportunistic deal that could pay huge dividends over the long haul.

Some are saying that this will revive competition since Google is too dominant. David Kirkpatrick at Fortune writes:

Search remains the Web’s best business. That’s where the lion’s share of ad dollars are spent, and Google controls more than 60% of it. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo will own almost 30%. If they can hold onto it that’s enough to be a meaningful competitor.

Microsoft controls a huge and multifaceted Web presence, and retains still-almost-unlimited financial resources. The combination of all that with Yahoo’s superior Web brand and deeply entrenched position as a marketplace for display advertising and online media is probably the only one that can begin to match the Google machine.

And since search is a game of scale, the two combining companies each acquire exponentially greater power than either could command on their own. Like buyers and sellers of goods on eBay, both buyers and sellers of search ads want to do business where there is the largest number of counterparties.

Forgive me for disagreeing with this analysis. I wasn’t the only one critical of this deal. Josh Quittner at Fortune blogs wrote:

The Valley view, then: Yahoo (YHOO) will be Microsoft’s AOL. Microsoft is paying too dearly for too little. When AOL and TimeWarner (TWX) merged, the Street went crazy with the wonderful possibilities that the synergy would bring: Combine AOL’s online reach with TimeWarner’s content? What a no-brainer! A no-brainer is right.

What exactly is Microsoft buying here? Technology? Yahoo has been managing a declining asset since Google invented a better way to do search, then figured out how to sell (And sell! And sell!) relevant ads against its superior results. Technologists? Talent has been fleeing Yahoo Central since Terry Semel got there — and the fact that co-founder Jerry Yang returned to get the company back on track hasn’t yet lured any of those Smart Dudes back.

Nope—Microsoft is buying an empty bag.

I agree wholeheartedly. In the U.S., I don’t think Microsoft gets much. I love some of Yahoo’s stuff like eGroups (aka Yahoogroups) and Yahoo Mail, but for Microsoft to think that I will use Yahoo search just because it is now Yacrosoft search? I think not. In fact, if MS tries to make the Yahoo portal more like MSN, I think they will lose a lot of customers. (not including me, because I don’t use Yahoo or MSN as a portal anyways) I think that this acquisition will end up being a poor business decision. MSN Livesearch and Yahoo will continue to hemorrage market share because Google’s search capability is just superior. Period. I don’t think it will be an AOL, but it will hardly be revolutionary for either company involved.

And for China, this really has little effect. Yahoo has failed in China, and having MS come in won’t make Yacrosoft search viable in China. Net effect in China: zero. Net effect in America: minimal at best. Just my prediction.

Bill Dodson posted yesterday on his blog that RedHat, the undaunted distributor of RedHat Linux (which must remain undaunted because Ubuntu and Kubuntu walked away with a very significant chunk of its market share over the past few years), has decided to sink roots and investment into Chengdu. From the “This is China!” blog:

I’m presuming RedHat has chosen to stay in Chengdu, based on an earlier story in ChinaTechNews ( 24 August 2007): “RedHat, one of the world’s largest open source and Linux software providers, has landed in Chengdu through Sofmit, the largest outsourcing software company in Sichuan Province.” RedHat and Sofmit had established a RedHat Southwest SOA Solution Center and China SOA Service Center in Chengdu.

One of Redhat’s grand plans is to partner up with the excellent technical universities in the area to create armies of Linux programmers, while they’re still vunerable to options outside the Microsoft universe.

Watch out Microsoft… resistance is futile!

I continue to have my doubts that Linux will be much of a threat outside of the server world. It is not a China issue. Linux, for all its proponents (myself being one of them), has never really caught on. Ubuntu has done about as good a job as anyone, but I still find people running Mac OS, Win XP, and Vista on their personal machines. On a server level, Linux is popular, but there are also other versions of UNIX running around as well.

My personal thought is that Linux will never take over China or the rest of the world until it is actually user friendly. Have you tried Gnome or KDE? They are not. Apple has built its UI over a UNIX core, and that is wildly successful. (though I caveat that Linux can do many things better than MacOS with the right customization) Windows, much as it is bloated, is very user friendly. RedHat can invest as much money as it wants, but until someone in the Linux world creates a user friendly interface, RedHat’s venture in Chengdu is really just about cheaper, well-educated labor.

Perhaps resistance is futile…