The study was conducted across six countries – Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines. The most important reason for this surge in usage of the internet is the increasing accessibility to broadband networks through Wi-Fi services, smartphones and other gadgets such as tablets, in addition to the continuing proliferation of traditional PCs in the region.

Users in Singapore were found to use the Internet the most among these countries, averaging about 25 hours per week. Among the other countries surveyed, Indonesians use the Internet the least, clocking an average of just 14 hours per week.

Time spent online in Southeast Asia

While PCs (desktops as well as laptops) continue to be used, devices such as smartphones and tablets are starting to cut into their market share. In Indonesia, 78% of users have got Internet-capable mobile phones as compared to just 29 percent who owned notebook computers or 31 percent with desktops.

While communicating through email is the most popular activity in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Thailand, users in Vietnam and Indonesia were more interested in accessing the news. Social networks are also becoming quite popular in this region and expectedly Facebook is the dominant network here too. YouTube is also among the top 5 sites visited in these countries.

Consumers in the region are also taking an interest in communicating with various brands online and often use the Internet to make decisions before purchasing any item. They also tend to post their own reviews later.

However, online advertising is still not a very popular medium of communication in this region. However, with the increasing use of the Internet, online marketers should concentrate on this region as it can only be good for them in the long run.

Melanie Ingrey, Nielsen’s research director for the APMEA region says, “Online activity is only going to increase in the years ahead as more consumers obtain smartphones, and 3G and broadband access become more common and affordable.”

Reports from Asian technology blog, Penn Olson state that for the past 5 days, Gmail services are being affected on Android handsets. The Android Market has also been intermittently inaccessible during the same period.

While the Gmail website is working as normal in China, both the Gmail app for Android and the Android Market have completely stopped working in the country. The website Blocked In China confirms that the Android Market is inaccessible on both Android devices and via the wired Web.

Android Market shows as “Blocked” in China

Gmail was the battleground where Google’s exit from China was decided. It comes as no surprise, then, that the service should also be blocked on mobile phones. What is surprising is the fact that it took Chinese authorities so long to make this decision.

Google Plus, on the other hand, was blocked hardly a week after it was launched in China, and remains that way since.

If the sequence of events repeat themselves, Google might find itself exiting the Chinese Mobile market as well, which could be yet another major blow to the company’s East Asian operations.

Unnamed sources at Baidu have claimed that the two parties have reached an understanding already. However, there has been no official confirmation from either party.

The report was first relayed on Sohu.com.

Stories about the possibility of such an agreement have been doing the rounds since last December when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg visited China on a business cum holiday trip. During this trip he not only met CEO of Baidu, Robin Li but also representatives of China Mobile Ltd. and Sina Corp.

It is believed that if such an agreement does reach the stage of execution, it will be in the form of a standalone service from Facebook. This service will not be connected to the international version, as they will be required to follow the censorship rules in China. At present topics such as pornography, gambling and criticism of the ruling Communist party are banned in China.

Facebook, Twitter YouTube etc. which do not follow these censorship guidelines have been blocked in China. Google on the other hand withdrew their operations from mainland China last year, following differences with the government.

Mark Zuckerberg will be required to sort out several issues not only in China but also in the U.S. before he is able to launch Facebook in China.

Launching the site in China, is now likely to be more difficult than ever before, because of the role which the internet in general and social networking sites in particular have played during the recent protests in Egypt, Libya etc.

A study conducted by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) shows that piracy affects the Australian economy to the tune of Australian $1.37 billion a year.

The direct losses due to piracy were to the extent of $A575 million including $A225 million for “secondary piracy”, where users borrow pirated products from others. The study also claims that the piracy resulted in the loss of about 6,100 jobs and reduced spending on recreation, clothing housing etc.

Other related businesses, such as cinema owners, local distributors, producers and retailers also lose income due to the piracy. The government also lost taxes to the extent of $A193 million.

It was largely felt that piracy was detrimental and damaging not only to the movie industry but also to the whole Australian economy, and hence it was believed to be imperative to start educating people about the issue immediately.

However, the Internet advocacy group Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) believes that the report will not be particularly effective in discouraging piracy. They suggest, instead, that the AFACT should concentrate on providing tools through which users can easily and legally download movies, instead of having to resort to illegal means.

Google has recently decided to hire a number of new employees in China. They are on the lookout for candidates to work on a variety of roles ranging from technical to marketing departments, with designations ranging from software designer to national marketing manager.

Six months ago, Google had to shut down their search service in mainland China following differences with the Chinese government. Since then, users have been referred to the Hong Kong site. The site, however, is not always available, thus causing Google to lose more market share.

The reported loss suffered varies according to various sources. According to Shanghaidaily.com Google’s market share fell from 23.6% to 12.3% and the search engine’s ranking also fell from the second position to the third. According to Analysys International, Google has retained the second position in the market, but their market share has fallen from 30.9% to 24.2%

In spite of this loss in market share, Google has continued to maintain offices for research and development and for advertising. A spokesperson for the company says, “Our engineering teams in Beijing and Shanghai continue to focus on bringing a steady stream of innovation to our services in China,”

This information, coupled with the fact that Google actually renewed their license to operate Google.cn in July, has given hope that they may be in talks with the Chinese government and may eventually restart their operations in the mainland.

In the meantime, Baidu, the official search engine for China, is way ahead of Google in terms of market share. Advertisers are still keen to do business with Google as it has been found that users who opt for Google are more educated and also richer than most others, and are thus more likely to spend money on the products and services being advertised.

Considering that China already has over 420 million internet users and continues to grow, even 20-30% of the Chinese Internet audience could bring substantial revenues to Google. It is in their best interests to restart their search service in mainland China.

Last year, in the month of June, Google had a market share of 23.6% in China, for mobile search, making them the second most popular search engine in that region after the local Baidu.

However, things have changed quite drastically in the last few months.

Google had a major disagreement with the Chinese authorities this year in January, following a spate of cyber-attacks on their properties. After this they decided that they did not want to bow down to the Chinese rules and regulations regarding censorship, and that eventually led to them pulling out of the Chinese search market.

Their users from the mainland were referred to the Hong Kong search site which remains uncensored.

This move probably did not go down too well with users, who may have felt some discomfort or unhappiness with the situation. A large number of users then switched loyalties to other search engines.

Handset makers such as Nokia and Motorola, who normally use Google as the default search engine have also made the necessary changes and are now using Baidu as the built-in search engine on their handsets in China.

As a result of this Google has now dropped to third place in the Chinese search market, with a market share of only 12.3% in the end of June 2010.

The Shenzhen based search engine Easou now comes in at second place with 16.9% of the market share, while Baidu retains the top slot with 34.3% of the market share.

The International Monetary Fund has predicted that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in these markets will grow much faster over the next 5 years than in the developed countries.

Keeping this fact in mind, marketers in industries such as media, financial services, telecommunications and consumer products will need to remodel their marketing strategy if they wish to target these developing markets.

Taking into consideration the difference in demand for Internet and mobile connections in these developing countries gives invaluable insight in the market’s requirements.

In developed countries, a per capita income of about $20,000 is required for Internet penetration to reach 50%, and the demand rises further with the income.

Mobile penetration, on the other hand, requires a much lower per capita income – just about $5,000 – to reach 50%. Several consumers also have more than 1 mobile phone, enabling penetration can exceed 100%! In fact, mobile penetration in countries such as Russia and Saudi Arabia is higher than that in the U.S. and Canada due to the fact that  mobile handsets are more affordable than personal computers.

It is estimated that in the next 5-7 years, mobile penetration will be 140 phones for 100 people even in countries with low GDP.

Mobile communication in emerging economies may generate even higher growth in business, than other mediums. While TV and the Internet can be used to reach larger and targeted audiences in developed countries, it may be wiser and easier for marketers to use mobile to reach larger audiences in developing countries, especially since Internet penetration in these countries will still take a while to grow to the same levels as those in the U.K. and Europe.

A reverse innovation model has been created, mobile advertising is being nurtured in developing coutries and then transferred to the developed markets. Investment in mobile advertising and technology would also yield better results to businesses in these developing countries.

In the entire Asia pacific region, social media has started affecting the buying decisions of users in a significant manner.

Online product reviews have become very popular and are next in line only to recommendations by family and friends. Products such as consumer electronics, cosmetics and cars are frequently reviewed here.

Interestingly however, different countries vary greatly in the way they share reviews. While the Koreans are most likely to post positive reviews the Chinese are most likely to post negative reviews of any product.

The report also shows that blogging is most popular in Japan, with over 1 million blogs being posted there every month. Twitter which had only about 200,000 users in Japan last year now has over 10 million users, which is 16% of the Japanese Internet population.

In China more than 80% of social media content is through bulletin boards, and new comers indulge in social gaming while the more experienced tend to share content. Virtual product placement in social gaming is very popular and social media celebrities like Sister Phoenix and Mr. Yuan are more popular than real celebrities.

Though Orkut is the most popular social network in India, Facebook is fast gaining in popularity. Twitter is also growing very fast and over 57% OF Twitter users in India, have joined in during the last year. Online product reviews are also very popular here.

In Korea, 95% of the Internet population accesses their social site Naver every month. The elections in June also saw the growth of mobile social media.

Australia has the highest global average for time spent on social media with users spending over 7 hours per month. Activities relating to sports and parenting are frequently discussed here. LinkedIn has also grown in popularity by 99% in the last year.

Interestingly, only the accounts of foreign journalists and analysts based in China and Taiwan were affected.

The journalists whose accounts were blocked received messages saying “We’ve detected an issue with your account”. They were asked to contact Yahoo! While one such account has been restored by the technicians at Yahoo! details about the other accounts are not yet available.

Yahoo!, of course, has said that they condemn the attacks and will do whatever they can to protect user privacy.

However, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) is not quite satisfied with this statement alone. In fact, they have blamed Yahoo! for not informing all their users about the situation.

As if these allegations were not enough to add to the growing international contempt for the Chinese government, Google, who recently shifted bases to Hong Kong, has also blamed the Chinese government’s censorship tools, commonly known as “The Great Firewall of China”, for blocking Google’s search services earlier in the week.

The services were later restored, so Google has admitted that they do not really know whether the drop in services was due to a technical fault on their end or an intentional move on the part of the Chinese government.

Google’s mobile Web services were also partially blocked later, but no reason has been provided for that.

GoDaddy will stop registering .cn domain names. However, they will continue to manage existing registrations.

Speaking at a U.S. Congressional Executive Commission on China, Christine Jones, Executive V.P. of GoDaddy said that the decision was made following the new requirements that the Chinese Government has imposed on the registration of new websites.

The Chinese government has now made it mandatory for newly registered sites to provide a photo ID of the person registering the site along with other details of business registration in China.

Jones later admitted that GoDaddy had also been a target of the same spate of cyber attacks that sparked Google’s battle with China.

Ellen Nakashima and Cecilia Kang at The Washington Post write, “The rules, the company believes, are an effort by China to increase monitoring and surveillance of website content and could put individuals who register their sites with the firm at risk. The company also believes the rules will have a ‘chilling effect’ on new domain registrations.”

Google and GoDaddy might soon be joined by PC manufacturer Dell, who has also suggested that they may move their operations from China to India. Could this increased monetary pressure, arising from the loss of business from China might make the government rethink their stance?

In January this year, Google threatened to cease operations in China, if they were not allowed to provide uncensored search results.

Until yesterday, Google waited in the hope of being able to sort out the issue with the Chinese government, but early on Tuesday, they announced their decision to quit the country.

Google has not, however, completely walked out of the country. Instead, the company has moved search operations out of Beijing into Hong Kong, where they are currently not required to censor search results.

Chinese Reaction: “Are we bothered?”

While this solution allows Google to operate within the laws laid down by the Chinese government, the company seems to have ruffled a lot of feathers. The decision might be widely commended in the Western press, but in China the sentiment is largely negative. Google is not the market leader and their presence will not be missed by the masses.

“We still have Baidu.com. I don’t use much Google to start with. Just go. Who cares?”, says an article on Chinese site, Sohu.com, “We welcome the exit of Google from China. We allowed you to earn so much money, and you still caused all this fuss. If you don’t want to abide by Chinese laws, just go away! Hong Kong is also a part of China, so you shouldn’t stay in Hong Kong either. Google is just a global thug of the US imperialists.”

Future Of Google China

The nearly 600-strong staff of Google.cn is unsure of their future. So far, they have resisted any temptation to move to other companies. Similarly, advertisers on Google have also resisted moving to other sites. This will definitely change if the Chinese government blocks Google altogether.

At present Google has retained a research and sales division, a map service and a free music portal, which is ad supported.

The Chinese government has condemned Google’s move to shut operations in China and have said that Google has violated their earlier commitments to follow the rules of China, as they had promised in 2006 when they first entered the Chinese market.

The government may decide to completely block all Google-related matter from the Internet in order to retaliate against the search provider.

Update: TechCrunch reports that the Chinese government has reacted to Google’s cheeky exit strategy by blocking the search results pages for certain search terms that they normally would have censored.

The New York Times is also reporting that Google’s ties with other Chinese companies are now being strained as the Chinese government is pressuring China Mobile and China Unicom to cancel their ageeements and plans.

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, has made it clear during an interview with CNBC & Bloomberg that Microsoft plans to continue working in China, and they will toe the line as is expected of them.

Following a meeting with President Obama at the White House, he told Bloomberg, “There are cyber attacks on all companies, of any size, from all parts of the world, not just China, at all times, so it’s hard for me to understand how that got tied into the whole notion of doing business in China.” He further said, “China’s the second largest market in the world … [Pulling out of China] is not something we’re thinking about. That’s not part of the way for us to grow.”

Google’s announcement stated that the company had been the direct victim of highly sophisticated and targeted cyber attacks that had originated in China. The attack not only resulted in the loss of corporate infrastructure and intellectual property, but also targeted various human rights activists.

Microsoft, on the other hand, said that they had not been affected by any such attacks and their email system has not been breached. The ethics of bowing to the Chinese government’s cesnorship requirements don’t seem to bother Microsoft.

Microsoft’s market share in China, which is currently estimated at just 0.25%, may grow if Google quits the Chinese search market.

U.S. Government officials have clearly stated that they support Google’s decision to pull out of China. White House spokesperson, Robert Gibbs said, “Our concern is with actions that threaten the universal rights of a free Internet.” While the White House has not yet taken any action against China, Philip Crowley of the State Department said that they will issue a formal message to Beijing and ask for an explanation.

If Google is to be believed, freedom of expression on the Internet is at stake here, as is the future of several companies who wish to do business in China, which is the world’s largest Internet market. Though, that is little more than grand-standing on Google’s part.

Human rights organisations in China have asked other companies to follow Google’s lead and withdraw from China if censorship continues.

So far, however, there is no indication that other companies will withdraw, and China seems adamant on maintaining their policies, since they know that the Western world will not be able to withdraw from their country very easily.

Search results that would have previously been censored now show on Google.cn

When Google was first launched in China, in January 2006, the company received a lot of flak for agreeing to censor some of their search results, in keeping with China’s political policies. However, they felt at that time, that it would be better to provide at least some services in China, rather than none at all. Google was also hopeful that the situation would improve gradually.

Following a series of hacker attacks last month, Google found that at least 20 other major corporations from diverse fields had been attacked. They was also found that apart from stealing corporate infrastructure, the hackers tried to illegally access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Google has taken a very serious view of these attacks and decided to stop playing ball with the Chinese government by refusing to censor search results in China. They will hold talks with the Chinese government regarding this and will shut down their Chinese operations if necessary.

China is currently the largest Internet market and although Baidu is the largest search engine there, Google has a 35% online advertising market share, worth about £620 million last year. However, according to Goldman Sachs, Google’s China earnings are only about 1% of its total revenue, and hence the decision to shut down is likely to be financially inconsequential in the short run.

It is possible, that these developments may affect Microsoft’s plans to operate in China.

While Google’s decision was appreciated by some, many criticised it as being opportunistic, empty posturing and just another blackmail tactic.

Research from the UK Trade and Investment government offices has found that despite favourable circumstances only 75,000 businesses in the U.K. are engaged in exporting their products and services.

Chief among the reasons for this low turn out are language and cultural barriers, apart from other factors like administrative restrictions, cross-border logistics etc.

To help businesses overcome these obstacles, Google has tied up with Applied Language Solutions, HSBC, Royal Mail, Institute of Export, U.K. Trade and Investment and Alibaba.com, to launch a new comprehensive solution called Export Adviser.

Google Export Adviser

UK-based businesses interested in export can now avail of this service.

The Export Adviser will help novices to start an export business by guiding them through various steps like identifying and evaluating target markets, judging the market demand, creating an English language keyword list, translating that list and forecasting a cost per click for those multilingual keywords.

The opportunity finder tool offers a neat tie-in between three Google tools to translate keywords, mine keyword data and predict demand in the market, as demonstrated by the simple example below, where a search for ‘seo’ brings up a map showing where most opportunities lie among emerging markets, along with suggestions for related keywords and rising keywords in various languages.

Google Export Adviser’s opportunity finder tool

For those who wish to expand their export business, the Export Box, created in partnership with Applied Language Solutions offers a slightly expensive (considering the target market is SME) solution: For a price of £3,000 users will be provided with the following:

1. A translated website, built as landing pages for specific search terms
2. Keywords and Adverts specially researched and designed for the target country in the target language
3. £1,000 worth of paid advertising on Google AdWords using Multilingual PPC, plus a free Google voucher worth £200
4. A free online shop front and discounts on Gold Supplier membership for Alibaba.com to market products to over 8 million international buyers
5. £1,000 worth of language support
6. Membership to the Institute of Export and discounted international banking with HSBC.

SMEs that don’t want the full support of this £3,000 package are lured by an alternative £200 AdWords voucher, the details of which can be found from AdWords account managers.

Screenshot of Google Export Adviser website

The newly formed alliance will be capable of providing search services to China telecom’s wireless subscribers across the entire country, of which about 33 million are CDMA subscribers while about 43 million are PHS subscribers.

Users will be able to receive solutions to almost any query sent by SMS, SIM card, OTA application, or menu operations which are preloaded on certain new handsets.

The search providers will give almost instantaneous answers to questions related to a variety of topics ranging from the latest news and weather to education or knowledge and business directories.

The service will initially be available only in the important markets of the country, but by the second half of 2009 the service will be accessible all over the country.

According to reports from Analysys International, mInfo is the clear market leader for search solutions in China. They are also on the final selection list along with Baidu as search partners for Unicom, which is the other major mobile service provider in China.

mInfo had also been chosen by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic games as the official search providers for the games.

In the meantime mInfo’s competitor Baidu has announced that they will be providing search services to the 3G subscribers of China Telecom, as they have formed a partnership with China Telecom’s directory information service which is known as Best Tone.

According to YouTube, the Chinese Government has not contacted them or given any reason for the ban. YouTube, and parent company, Google, are trying to have the service restored.

Without either denying or admitting to the blockage of the site, a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, “Chinese Government has taken up management of the network according to the laws.”

Blocking of Foreign websites in China is nothing new. The government often blocks any content which they feel is inappropriate or objectionable.

Last year, they had blocked YouTube, for showing videos of the anti-government Tibetan demonstrations in an attempt to prevent the public from knowing about the protests.

The current block, coincides with the release of a video by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, which shows the ill-treatment of the Tibetan protestors by the Chinese authorities during the demonstrations which occurred last year.

Another site, Blip.tv which also posted the said video has also been blocked.

By blocking foreign sites the Chinese government, hopes to be able to lure the Chinese public away from them and towards local websites such as Tudou.com because it is much easier to control the content shown on these sites.

China, is however not the only country to ban YouTube. It has been banned off and on in various countries, such as Thailand, Turkey, Pakistan etc. whenever the governments there disapprove of any content.

The survey was conducted across 16 countries, with over 27,000 participants, ranging between 18 and 55 years of age.

Users from China were found to spend the highest amount of their leisure time online – approximately 44%, as compared to only about 16% of free time spent online by users in Denmark, which was ranked last among the 16 countries.

While youngsters below the age of 25 spent about 36% of their free time online, Chinese users in the same age group spent nearly 50% of their leisure time online.

Interestingly, while the average U.K. user spent about 28% of his / her spare time on the net, the average housewife from the UK spent 47% of her spare time on the net, which is even higher than the average time spent by the Chinese online.

Unemployed U.K. resident spent 32% of their free time online; students spent 39% of their free time online.

British residents also revealed that the majority of them do not trust the information provided through newspapers too much. Only 23% of them trusted newspapers, as compared to 69% of people from Finland. The British feel that online news is a trustworthy source of information, second only to that relayed by a good friend.

Where social networking is concerned, the BBC reports that the survey found the average number of online contacts each user had was 17.

When the respondents were asked if they had met any of their online contacts in person, the Germans topped the list, with 76% replying in the affirmative, while China was at the bottom of the list here with only 44% saying yes.

On an average 60% of users had managed to meet some of their online friends. Users from U.K. reported that 58% of them had met online friends, while 455 of them had spoken to them over the phone.

37% of users from U.K., however, reported that they could not be sure of the true identity of their online friends.

Citizen Lab has come across a database, which has thousands of words, that are considered to be politically sensitive. Whenever a Skype message contains any of these words, it gets automatically blocked. The database on which these words are stored also stores the personal information of the users, including their IP address, username and phone number. The database is insecure and hence is publicly available, which is a blatant breach of security for the users.

According to Citizen Lab, there is a surveillance system in place, which selects and stores messages transmitted through online telephones, and text messages. The messages that get deleted may contain some commonly used words such as democracy, Taiwan, Tibet, Voice of America, milk powder, Olympic games, earthquake, Tiananmen and SARS. The database reportedly contains over 1,50,000 messages, and it is possible to identify all the senders and recipients by entering just a username.

The internet service provider Skype, which runs its services in China in a joint venture with the Chinese company TOM online, under the name TOM-Skype, says that they are aware of the filtering of data by the Chinese authorities, but are concerned by reports about the resultant breach of security.

Citizen Lab has enquired whether or not Tom online and Skype are cooperating with the Chinese authorities and if so to what extent.

President of Skype, Josh Silverman has said that it is common knowledge that that Tom Online follows procedures to meet the local laws and regulations, such as monitoring and blocking messages containing certain words, which the Chinese government disapproves of. However according to policy these messages are to be deleted. They will have to investigate to know if the policy has been changed to allow storage of these messages and why.

Madhouse Inc. started a contextual ad service, towards the end of 2007. They have also started full screen interstitial mobile ad products and mobile video ad products this year, which are firsts for China, and have been very well received

Ad platforms in China allow mobile ads to be targeted to users depending on their location, mobile phone brand, model, and even retail price. The services can also optimise ad versions and frequency of ads shown, clicked or downloaded by each individual customer, similar to the way Google AdWords does.

China currently boasts over 500 million mobile phone subscribers, which represents a penetration rate of under 50 percent. Most Western European nations have penetration rates of over 100 percent.

If the Chinese population adopt mobile usage in a similar manner, the potential audience for mobile advertising in just that country will overshadow Europe or North America.

The use of the Olympic symbol upset the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which registered a complaint under the DMCA law, alleging copyright infringement under intellectual property rights.

What most likely upset the IOC was the transition of the Olympic rings into the handcuffs. While the Olympics have always been a platform to depict equal rights, freedom and sportsmanship, the handcuffs signify just the reverse.
In light of this complaint, YouTube was left with no choice but to remove the offending video from their site.

Supporters of Free Tibet have retaliated by criticising the IOC, stating that this is a case of unjustified censorship, as the video in question is absolutely legal and non-infringing.

The IOC, in reply, has stated that the video was taken down by ‘automated copyright protection software‘, which has been installed to prevent the illegal uploading of Olympic content.

The video, however, has already found its way to other sites, allowing users to continue viewing the clip:

Olympic rings turn into handcuffs. Click image to view the video.

Ensuring that the 2008 Olympic games do not turn into a political fiasco is in the best interests of the IOC and the Chinese government. They have both been working hard to squash any negative publicity around the events, rather unsuccessfully, and often to a ridiculous extent, such as by denying the presence of obviously high levels of pollution near the Olympic venues.

The service, which is only available to users in China, will directly challenge the illegal MP3 Search offered by Baidu. Of course, Google’s links will all be legal, and the results will be provided by ‘Top100.cn’.

Users from outside China cannot access the service, and instead see a blank page with one line of text in Chinese, that reads “Sorry, you are not in a region where Google provides this service.”

www.google.cn/music

Google will offer this new service for free, providing streaming music, downloads and lyrics. It will be funded by advertising revenues and paid caller ring back tones via China Mobile. They will provide mostly Chinese music, and most of the major domestic labels have already cleared rights for the service.

How much Google’s new service offering will affect Baidu, is to be seen. The service will definitely be better than other international ones such as We7 and Spiral Frog. Users will be able to keep the downloaded MP3 tracks indefinitely and the downloads will be DRM free, which means users will be allowed to freely transfer music onto their portable devices.

Baidu, which already has a head start on Google, accounts for about 30% of the traffic on these sites.

Google is expected to score over Baidu, as they will share revenue with all their content providers via Top100.cn. Baidu, on the other hand, has always kept all the profits for itself, except lately, when they started profit-sharing with a few of their top content providers.

It now makes good sense for all the music labels and independent artistes to join Google, as they will be assured of receiving their fair share of the revenue.

Top 100.cn, however, will have to work hard to convince all its remaining partners to start providing content to Google, failing which Google’s service will seem incomplete, and that may deter users from switching loyalties from Baidu.

Another problem that Google may have to contend with is apathy on the part of users who are already satisfied with the service provided by Baidu, even though it is illegal.

It must be remembered that other Mp3 service providers in China, have not made any difference to Baidu’s popularity. All these services are of course illegal. It also remains to be seen, if the URL, www.google.cn/music will work in Google’s favor, by creating its own brand identity, or against it as users in China are used to the term ‘MP3′ in the URL of music search engines.

Chinese authorities will now be in a better position to take some concrete steps against illegal service providers, like Baidu, as a legal alternative is now available to users. It also looks as though it will finally be possible for content providers to get even with Baidu for its misbehavior and high-handedness in the past.

In a bid to retaliate, some Chinese citizens demonstrated against and decided to boycott the French hypermarket chain Carrefour in China from May 8 to 24, the time during which the Olympics will be held in Beijing. Soon after that, it was found that searches carried out on Google.cn for the word “Carrefour” did not show any results even though Google.com has over 6 million results on the subject and they are available in Hong Kong, which is outside China’s national network.

Searches for Carrefour on Google China bring up a message that informs us that ‘this information cannot be accessed and one should return to google.cn for other information’. News and video searches for Carrefour have also been blanked out.

Censorship of domains is quite a common practice in China, but censorship of keywords is something relatively new. It is believed, that if this censorship has been carried out by Google under instructions from the Chinese government, it is more likely to have been ordered with a view to appease the agitating public rather than to hurt Carrefour per se.

While the Chinese government encourages a show of patriotism, it is not in their best interests to encourage huge hordes of angry protesters, as this may eventually harm their own set up – they intend to use the Olympics to project an image of tolerance and non-dictatorialism to the world.

In the past Google has often cooperated with the Chinese government and agreed to impose a degree of self-censorship. For example, some satellite imagery is not available on Google Maps, and a number of domains relating to human rights organizations are missing from the search index. Anti-government sources have also been removed from Google News.

It is not absolutely certain, though, whether this ban is from Google or the Chinese government. It is quite possible that the Chinese have developed some system to block specific search queries, perhaps based on the specific URL returned for individual queries. At present, neither part has commented on the ban.

Protests erupted in Lhasa the capital of Tibet, against the Chinese government. The Chinese government blocked the popular video-sharing website YouTube to restrict the public from getting information on the protests. Soon after, access to other sites such as Yahoo!, Google News, the Guardian UK, The Times Online and the BBC was either completely cut off or selectively filtered.

The Chinese government usually encourages the use of the Internet for educational and business purposes, but has placed online filters to regularly block access to any foreign material that they feel is inappropriate or objectionable. Chinese websites such as youku.com, tudou.com and 56.com have not published any information about the protests in Tibet as theses sites are expected to enforce self-censorship.

Chinese users trying to access YouTube, just found a blank screen. The government has made no official statement about this move. Interestingly, today YouTube has almost as many videos depicting opposition to the Tibetan protests as it has of protesters against the Chinese government.

Video on YouTube showing protests in Tibet

This is the second time in less than a month that an Eastern government has blocked access to YouTube. In the last week of February, the government of Pakistan had ordered the national ISP to block access to YouTube, leading to the site going down worldwide due to a propogation error.

While the Internet allows individuals from all over the world to share their thoughts and experiences, it also allows more and more people in the world to become aware of the plight of others. Stamping out free speech by banning video sharing sites and newspapers might cocoon the citizens of China temporarily, but in the long run, the Chinese government will end up hurting its own credibility in the West.

coComment allows users to keep track of all the comments and discussions they are participating in or observing on the web. Users get notified when someone adds to their comment stream or discussion. And, if they’re bloggers, the users can display the comments they make elsewhere back on their own blog.

Farhad Divecha: Let’s start with a quick introduction of what coComment is all about…

Matt Colebourne: Certainly, we are one stop shop to track, manage, share,and explore conversations on the Web. We can keep track of all the conversations that an individual is having, and so they can place comments on 50 different sites, local forums and whole bunch of different places. We will follow all those conversation and they will receive updates. We would also allow them to share those conversations with other people via, say their Facebook profile or any other profile for that matter. Currently we have about fourteen and a half million that we are tracking on a thousands of different sites.

Farhad: So could you essentially pick conversations from a number of places and syndicate or show them on any other place that you wanted to?

Matt: Yes, exactly. And all of your conversation will show up on your profile page on coComment.

Farhad: Can users then decide who can see these conversations and who cannot or is everything just public information?

Matt: Users can decide. The new version gives users the opportunity, should they wish to control who can see everything they say.

Farhad: Let’s talk a bit about the social aspect of this. I find this concept quite interesting because one of the problems that I personally face, and in fact quite a few of the people I have spoken to recently also face, is the problem of too much social variety. We all have profiles on a number of different networks and blogs that we visit regularly.

You start talking in one place about one thing; you like the discussion there and you might share it with a few friends by then starting a new conversation elsewhere about the same topic. A little bit down the line you see somebody else talking about the same topic, and you pipe in there. Soon you have participated in a conversation on the same topic in 10 different places with 10 different people, and you start losing track of what you have said. How does coComment’s offering tie in that social aspect and does it rely in some ways on everybody who is conversing with you also using it?

Matt: No not necessarily; because you can bring people in the conversation using a range of third-party tools such as Twitter but I think what makes a great conversation the first thing is the topic should be something that the audience is interested in, and the other thing is that people who participate in the conversation. For example you could visit a cathedral and just have a look around, which isn’t the most exciting thing for me. However, if the tour guide I appointed was absolutely mesmerising and told me the history of the place and really brought it to life, I would have had a different experience and enjoyed the same activity thoroughly.

For us the question was therefore, if that is what makes a good conversation, how do we bring this model online? We are not trying to build a social network. What we are doing is allowing the natural conversational behaviour to operate on the Internet, allowing people to share stories and getting others to participate.

Farhad: In some ways, though, that still leaves one slight problem unsolved … if you have these conversations in 10 different places, and they might be conversations around a really interesting topic and in each of those places you have two or three really interesting participants with whom you want to carry on the conversation, you still have to go to 10 different places to carry on that conversation, or somehow get all of them to converge in one place.

Matt: Bear in mind that all of those conversation are tracked in a single location, so you are only ever 1 click away from each one. What the system will also do is tell you who your neighbours are, and so therefore point out to you that they are commenting on the four different blogs that you’re commenting on, and therefore you should possibly connect to them. What coComment cannot do is take the user away from the site. So while you can’t bring the conversations together, what you can do is view them all in the same location so that it becomes much easier.

Farhad: That’s good because it does take the pain away to a great degree.

Now let’s talk a little bit now about the reason we actually got in touch in the first place. A post that we published in mid-January talked about the Government of India’s plans to regulate blogging and whether that was a good idea. Also, in recent times we have had a lot of different stories come up in the news from countries like Russia, China and Iraq where people do not enjoy freedom of speech as we do. People in these countries use blogs to voice their opinions and use search engines like Google to find information.

In countries like Iraq where people are not typically connected, even now, to the World Wide Web, and the newspapers are controlled by the government or the dictatorships, people use blogs and the Internet in general to voice opinions that otherwise would never be heard.

How is coComment changing that, or making it easier to give a voice to individuals from the various parts of the world where normally one would never have heard their opinions?

Matt: Firstly the biggest one, probably, is access to a larger audience. What could have been a small cry lost in the wilderness could now be heard by millions if what the individual was saying was relevant.

There is also the bigger issue of freedom of speech. What people who oppose that individual’s freedom of speech tend to use as defence is the disruption created and the impact on other individuals. What we’re doing here is saying “let’s turn things round a little bit.” What we say to people is “let us not impinge on what people want to say,” we say this to publishers, brand owners and corporations as well, “because if the users don’t say it here, they will say it somewhere else, and you may never know about it.”

Rather than censoring on behalf of individuals, we let the other individuals react and take the first person down. We should treat bloggers and their visitors as adult. Users then think about the social consequences of saying something and that makes each user choose what they do or not say. This is a far, far better solution than trying to get an employee or officer or a censor board to moderate on behalf of individuals.

I think we support the freedom of the individual to say what they want and we also support the freedom of the reader to choose what to read.

Farhad: Just playing the devil’s advocate here, one could make the argument that a system like yours could also work very well for those who want to stifle freedom of speech.

Instead of having to monitor a hundred thousand different venues where a person or a dissident could go and speak. Now all they need to do is to come to one place and monitor all the conversations. In some ways, this system is making it easier for dictatorships or governmental regimes who do not advocate freedom of speech and try to thwart it.

It becomes so much easier for the government of China or a dictator or a Communist President to pinpoint who the particular dissident is and where they are voicing those opinions and shut them down by whatever means. And what’s worse is that the means these guys use tend to be a lot more drastic than just banning conversations or user profile or giving them lower trust ranks.

What would your response be to that sort of a counter argument, I mean, it is making things easier, isn’t it?

Matt: We did not make things easier. To be honest with you we do not do anything that could not already be done. We just present conversations in a way that benefit the end user. We have not built anything that can be employed by people who want to abuse freedom of speech to do something they cannot already do.

Farhad: Yes absolutely, you are right there. You have not made it possible, but you have made it easier

Matt: Well we have made it slightly, but bear in mind we certainly mitigated the very small potential for misuse because we don’t require the users to tell us who they are, we don’t require them to be registered for three days and can use the guest id for that period, but also we don’t assume any ownership of the content; The content either belongs to the site that hosts it or to the end user, and what that means is that we believe the content is the user’s content and we will protect their rights to it, and to do whatever they need to with it without heed to any kind of oppressive government.

Farhad: Alright, could you tell me a little bit more about the data privacy aspect. You touched upon this yourself when you said that users don’t need to identify themselves on your website but very often most other websites do require users to identify themselves before they start placing comments also most comment systems will very easily track the IP Address etcetera. So is there some way that users could use the coComment system to hide their identities?

Matt: I wouldn’t say they can actively use it to hide because obviously they’re still commenting on the site and not on coComment. They can essentially use something called meta conversations where the person can write a comment on any website anywhere in the world and it looks like it’s on the site, but actually it is hosted on coComment. Now if they do that those conversations can be public or private. If it’s public, any other coCommenter can see it. If it is private, only the people that you select will see it.

Farhad: When people can see your comments, though, would they also be able to run a backwards check or who is and figure out where you are coming from?

Matt: The point is, that they won’t even see the conversation unless you’ve chosen to let them see it. They won’t even know the conversation is there.

Farhad: But you see, at times with people who want to voice their opinions, they want to share their views but not necessarily be found. Someone who is against the Russian Premier right now, or against the Iraqi government, would want everybody else to hear what his thoughts are but still not necessarily be want to be found.

Matt: In which case this would be perfect. They would set up the system to make the comments public to coComment, make that available to a limited audience, such that those people who are interested get notified and then select whom they want to allow to participate.

Farhad: It would be interesting to know how many people are aware of such things in the third world, and can use it. And with knowledge of such a system whether countries like India and China would even be having debates about regulating blogs because they would then realise that they can’t do much, since there is always going to be a way around it.

Matt: Yes, it is quite a neat way around it, because even though the content appears to be sitting on the site, to end users and the search engines, it is actually sitting on our servers and getting sent direct to the end users.

Farhad: I now have just two last questions – what is the future going to hold for coComment and what do you think is the future of blogging, conversations and social networking online? Which way are we headed? Which way are you guys headed? And which way is the entire blogosphere and the Internet headed, in your opinion?

Matt: Our opinion is that the whole aspect of commenting or conversations is going to become bigger, because essentially Web 2.0 is about interaction, people interacting online is becoming ubiquitous – even my 70-year old mother is going onto website and commenting rather than writing letters. This space is absolutely exploding, and rightly so, because what it does is it enables people to find out more information, to say what they think about it and defend there views publicly in front of thousands, in a way that was never possible before. That can only be a good thing.

Farhad: Well, it has been very interesting talking to you. I think the conversation has touched upon some very interesting topics. For us here it does not seem as much of a minefield as it does out in the East right now. We take this freedom for granted. I would have been shocked if the UK government or the US or Canadian government ever even considered regulating blogs or any other form of social networking, but there are people out there who see blogging as the only venue to air their views. I hope that this right is never taken away from them.

Screenshot of a coComment user profile