internet - The Google strategy, and its consequences for nanny



Today I have been giving the latest developments on Google in China some thought, after I discovered that their new service had virtually deleted parts of the already very leaky internet firewall. Did I tell you that this evening I could also get Google News without any problem when I use the Google Web Accelerator?
The strategy of Google (and I now summerize very short the analysis of people who make following the company into their daily business) is to become an intermediar between the internet user and the internet in all aspects. What happens is that they try to suck away traffic into their systems, as they did very well with their web search engine, desktop search and gmail. Setting up this gigantic proxy called the web accelerator fits into that strategy and has as interesting side-effect that we can avoid the IP-blocks in China. There is a danger in losing some privacy, but to be honest, I would rather lose that to Google than to the FLG who provided me with proxies in the past.
What is next? Google will have to rethink their China-strategy, now they plan to enter the China market not only virtually. When it wants to stick to its image of being not evil, they can of course not censor the traffic in the way the Chinese censor does. Or can they? Those are important questions for the near future.

Update: the word is getting out pretty fast despite the holidays. Read here what Yan Feng has to say.

Books on censorship