People still use Yahoo?

people still use yahoo...?

People still use Yahoo!.

yes they do!

do you use flickr??

you use YAHOO!!

Aw dang, is flickr really yahoo?? I love flickr.

PBS is airing an episode of Frontline on Tiananmen Square. They feign to showcase the never-revealed identity of the so-called "Tank Man" who stood in front of a column of tanks in obvious protest of their forceful presence. (I was only a bit annoyed that never having met the man, they assumed so much about his motives and thoughts and put words in his mouth.)

The final segment of the program discusses the Chinese government's persistent and widespread censorship with the aid of western firms Yahoo, Cisco, Google and Microsoft. They include footage of the U.S. hearing after the first arrest on Yahoo's tainted hands. The companies' argument is that overall, it's better to have some presence in China than none. In other words, it's better to provide partial truths than silence, and to some degree that's probably a reasonable argument. It's better that Google provides search for the Chinese people than that the Chinese government provide their own.

I fear the more realistic reason is that China is a booming market for western companies, and each of the above companies would be damned if they let another get a majority stakehold first, even if its ethical perception in the west is compromised in the process. If you Tivo/PVR/MCE, I suggest you take the hour to watch this:


FRONTLINE: Tank Man

Well, their Hong Kong unit made that decision, irrespective of the opinions of the head honchos on the mainland. Blanket-blaming the entire company is rather unfair.

Oh, so the Hong Kong unit controls the whole company? I think not. It's extremely fair to blame the whole company. It was a corporate decision. That's what corporate means. Unless you can show that the Hong Kong unit will suffer any kind of corporate punishment at all, then it's exactly the same as if the email came from the hand of the CEO.

Yahoo is now a major email provider for lots and lots of ISPs that don't have Yahoo in the name. Remember Prodigy? Lots of prodigy.com addresses still out there. They run British Telecom's email systems for them, too, I believe. And there are thousands, possibly millions, of private domains that are really Yahoo behind the scenes. Boycotting them isn't practical.

But exposing this garbage to the light of day is. Yahoo's behavior in China is shameful. So is Google's. It's not just handing over an email to an authoritarian government; it's that they have their hands in your email to begin with.

The PBS special is great. I remember some of it first hand, but this aired many more details and photos. Excellent.

It might be China, but welcome to the Bush world as well.

All of your email is being filtered via NSA - as well as voice communications......in this era with cheap mega mega computer power - easy task.

At no point will the Govt admit to just how extensive they already monitor us. Super secret stuff, paid by the back box budget in the many billions.

Christ, all he did was draft it. He didn't even send the fucking thing and he gets jailed. What a great country! Can't wait to see what the world looks like once they've taken it over.

The alternative is to actively defy China and likely get blackballed from their market (all one billion potential customers) for good.

to paraphrase sir winston: so Gomez, now that we've established that you're a prostitute, what's your price point?

You're an idealist without a clue, Gnossos.

ahhh...that's the problem with much online humor; often just doesn't translate that well.

I meant that as good natured ribbing,
not as a personal dig. Apologies. (and actually, I've a few clues, I get 'em bulk rate)

But there is a real question there: what is the market cut off size for principle to take hold. Clearly, everyone's caving in at a
billion. What about one million?

the first time I read this was happening I canceled my Yahoo account (which I did not use that much anyway) but I used to read Yahoo news so I changed to another source. Everything you can find on Yahoo you can find somewhere else.