Sinobyte: China and technology

Microsoft is not a beacon of free expression in the face of China's government restrictions on online speech. But in a talk at Stanford, he said no one can control free expression on the web.

"I don't see any risk in the world at large that someone will restrict free content flow on the Internet," Gates said, according to IDC news service. "You cannot control the Internet."

As the article notes, Microsoft has been complicit in Chinese censorship. In the most high-profile case, the company shut down a blog by Michael Anti, a blogger who the authorities responsible for internet restrictions had noticed. Rebecca MacKinnon, a blogger and professor at Hong Kong University, has outlined how a Microsoft site banned certain sensitive terms in Chinese. (See this post among many others.)

Yahoo, which may become the newest, most famous member of the Microsoft Corp. family, has also cooperated with Chinese authorities in efforts to restrict online expression. To free speech advocates, Gates' comment may seem like a positive element. But I don't expect advocates to give Gates and his company a pass on past cooperation.

IDC writes:

It will be driven by business requirements. Restrictions on free speech will curtail business activity, and so commercial forces will work against censorship, Gates said. "If your country wants to have a developed economy ... you basically have to open up the Internet," he said.

These comments frankly strike me as empty words. As much as many idealists would like to believe that free speech is required to be "developed," I would need to see evidence supporting this correlation to get on board. Meanwhile, actions speak louder than words. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have acted in a way that indicates their economic development in China is worth cooperating with policies Gates apparently doesn't see as sustainable.

If Gates believes that free speech is good, and that it will inevitably prevail, I wonder how he feels about participating in filtering in the meantime. An alert Stanford student would have asked him, and if someone did, an alert reporter would have mentioned what he said. If he says you "cannot control the Internet," we can be forgiven for noting that his company helps people try.

"According to Zaobao.com, Beijing has intervened into Microsoft's acquisition of Yahoo by asking Chinese online e-commerce service provider Alibaba to provide detailed information on the acquisition and by keeping a close watch on the process of the acquisition as well as its possible influence," writes ChinaTechNews.com.

Chinese authorities have an interest in the deal partly because Yahoo is a major shareholder of Alibaba, a major online marketplace where manufacturers find customers.

Microsoft has launched Live Search 地图, the China branch of its Virtual Earth project.

Compared with Google's ditu.google.cn and Sogou's (搜狗) map.sogou.com, the site seems about the same, if a little faster--though traffic may still be low. What Google and Microsoft have in common is that the maps contain listings for restaurants, banks, and other locations rendered as icons on the map. Sogou has no such advantage, but sometimes it resolves addresses better than Google.

But here's the interesting part: Microsoft's new service includes major highways and the locations of main cities on Taiwan. It never occurred to me before, but so does Google's. Sogou, on the other hand, has a full detail map of Taibei (Taipei).

Is it just me, or does this suggest that Google and Microsoft may have struck a compromise between people who would want Taiwan included and people who would rather see it separate? Google has a much better map of Taiwan on Google.tw.

I don't want to suggest there isn't a good reason to have different map sites serving mainland China and Taiwan audiences. Here in Beijing and throughout the mainland, we use Simplified Chinese characters; in Taiwan, they still use Traditional characters. This is important because place names look different in the two systems. Even the word China is different: 中国 (Simplified) and 中國 (Traditional).

It's perhaps unsurprising that Sogou's Taiwan map uses Simplified. But it is interesting that both Microsoft and Google have included partial map information for Taiwan on their mainland-focused sites. For another day, perhaps I'll look at where they drew the international barriers at sea, but we already know making maps can be a source of controversy. Just look what happened when a Chinese-made map for sale in Japan was recalled over labeling Taiwan.

UPDATE: Just as I finished writing, I noticed a headline from Marbridge Consulting's Web site noting that China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping recently published a to do list for 2008, including the drafting of a document all three sites would be wise to watch: "Suggestions on Increasing the Supervision and Management of Mapping and Geographical Information Websites."