Google is giving China the finger. ‘Attack us and we will show your population the truth. [Bitches]‘
Official Google Blog: A new approach to China.
Implications:
This is a nation on company event. China attacked a company and now that company is taking retaliatory action. A nation attacking a company is nothing really new, but in this case the company (Google) has the capacity to do something about it. Depending on how this plays out Google could be doing something that a) no other company has had the balls to do and b) something the US Gov could only dream about doing.
Fallout:
Obviously, China could block Google. Then we would be in the same situation with Iran and Twitter (start your proxies!). China could also do what they did during the Weger problems and shutdown all of the internet. In one case they are playing whack a mole and in another they will be stunting their economy. Will China stop its cyber attacks? My guess, probably not. Will they block Google? Publicly maybe not, but I bet we will get reports that its Google.cn has been blocked.
The third option is for China to do nothing. Why this could work takes a little knowledge about how search engines work. But simply if you search for something in Chinese, Google.cn will reply with what it has in Chinese. So if China already has all the Chinese writers afraid to write about something then there will be no content to feed the search engine. Similarly the searcher needs to know what to search for. Hence the reason something like twitter has the potential to cause much more immediate and gaping PR disasters. The Google’s lack of censorship China could quietly deal with for years barring word spreading rapidly though China that this information was available (something that is not likely to happen as China controls its media).
Get Your Website Banned in [Country Here] and Piss Off Your Host:
If China plays whack a mole, you might be able to help. If you have a hosting account with PHP you can create a proxy. Just download PHProxy and drop the files in a directory of your choosing. Instant Proxy. Of course if you have a shell you could open up SSH tunneling which would be a lot more secure for the people you are trying to help.
Danger for the Searcher
If you are in China you need to think twice about bouncing over to Google.cn and typing in whatever. That traffic is not encrypted and you would not be safe from a big brother watching for such a traffic pattern. SSH tunneling could provide a degree of privacy. China could use this as a Honey Pot opportunity to identify dissidents.
Searching Google.cn
I wanted to know if anything about tiananmen square was coming up in auto complete. Right now it looks like you need to speak English. The simplified Chinese that I tested was not coming up with anything. This may just be that no one speaking Chinese is looking for that stuff yet or writing about it.
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