“Do no evil”

That is Google’s supposed corporate mantra.

Have they kept to it, though?

This past week when I was OTG, the blogosphere went all a-twitter – pun intended – when the Googligans, through their chief ambulance chaser, David Drummond, declared that Google was ‘thinking’ of leaving the Chinese market due to a severe case of cyber-spying by organs of the Chinese government.

Give me a fracking break, OK?

The Twitterverse went ablaze with several good-meaning people praising Google, and slamming the other search engines.

Which sounds good, until you peel back the legal mouthpiece’s musings like an onion, and realize that

1. It was just a threat to ‘leave China’,
2. Google did so to obfuscate the fact that they had been dealing with the Chinese government to identify dissidents, and
3. Their only reason for doing so was to deflect the inevitable outcry when the fact that Google had been subdulously working with the Chinese against dissent was publicized.

In other words, Google had succeeded in schneidering most of the people praising them.

There are, however, several sides to this story. I was OTG so I couldn’t post then, but I have been simmering over the totally undeserved goodwill Google was enjoying.

Google’s case: they had determined that the Chinese government had used surrogates to break into Google systems and extract information on Chinese accounts.

They (Google) weren’t going to stand for that, and as a result, were ‘thinking of pulling out of the Chinese market’.

Yeah, like that would happen!

Saber-rattling aside, you have to give Google props. This is a market where they are the also-ran, and while the potential there is great, they have absolutely no traction against the entrenched leader there. So, while the threat seems credible on the surface, that emperor’s got no clothes!

How did Google get here?
In order to make a determination of how Google got here, a total debunking of Google’s China play has to be read up on. Since we do not have the time here, nor do I have the inclination to do so, we shall stay within the salient points of L’affaire Google en China.

While it was initially reported that the origin of the cyber break-in was an infected PDF file, that allegation has been found to be untrue. In fact, the break-in was due to the following two points:

1. The use of IE6, and
2. Google’s Spy portal

IE6

Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6, commonly known as IE6, was the point of insertion for targeted malware that infected Google computers and allowed the Chinese spies to begin their nefarious work.

It would be laughable if it wasn’t true: the spies gained access to Google’s infrastructure using IE6 installed on Microsoft Windows XP computers.

I am going to assume that these attacks happened after October 22, 2009.

If so, what is Google's reason for having corporate systems still running Windows XP and IE6, both circa 2001 products when IE7 was released 40 months ago, and IE8 about a year ago?

By the way, even if Google didn’t want to upgrade to Windows 7, using IE8 with Windows XP Service Pack 3 would have negated the issue.

It would mean that Google was two generations behind on both operating systems and browsers.

For which, if it was corporate policy to still have those systems – and I have no doubt it was – Google was/is directly responsible for the attacks, and Google’s corporate policy is responsible for putting Chinese dissidents in danger.

However, corporate stupidity at Google pales in contrast to corporate greed there, bringing us to point #2

Google’s Spy Portal

All readers know where I stand with respect to Google: I don’t trust them.

For, in their un-quenching quest for ever more bars of gold-pressed Latinum, those guys would sell all of us to the highest bidder. Resultantly, in my daily life I try to not use any thing Google. I even deprecated the use of my GrandCentral accounts when it became Google Voice, despite the utility of that product. Yes, I distrust them that much!

Unbeknownst to most, a condition of Google doing business in China was the setup of a portal whereby the dissident, dissent, and civil rights suppression directorates of the Chinese government could go to obtain detailed, real-time information on searches by Chinese Google users.

Yes, Google set such a portal up.

And equipped it with Windows XP-based systems running IE6.

The rest as you know is history.

Now that their ‘partners’ wanted more information, Google is trying to offset the forthcoming legal sh*tstorm by Chinese dissidents by saying that would terminate their business in China, and take the high road.

The ‘high road’?

Google?

How can a company with the corporate motto of “do no evil” conspire to perform such a blatantly malevolent act in the first place?

Do no evil?

Do no evil, my ass!

Frigtards!

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