Google's spat with Chinese government causes 'postponement' of Android phones
By Vlad Savov 
posted January 19th 2010 7:10AM
posted January 19th 2010 7:10AM
You have to love a good clash of legitimate titans, and they don't get much bigger than Google and China. After deciding to stop censoring its Google.cn results, the Mountain View company of evil-non-doers has stepped up its offensive with the announcement that two Android phones -- one from Samsung and one from Motorola -- which were slated to make their arrival on China Unicom on Wednesday have now been postponed. We'll read between the lines and guess that the phones will be "postponed" if China plays nice, or "never gonna happen" if it doesn't. Google seems intent on demonstrating the full impact of its potential withdrawal from China, and this show of its sway with mobile manufacturers will hardly go unnoticed.[Thanks, David Casteneta]
Doesn't matter, the phones will be KIRF'd anyways........
Anyone else happy they don't live in China?
@Macmee
Soon, very soon. China already owns 50% of the United States, soon 50% of the world, followed by 50% of the Universe.
You will be assimilated.
@(Unverified) Exactly. I'm sure China aren't particularly worried about this one.
"the phones will be 'postponed' if China plays nice, or 'never gonna happen' if it doesn't."
More like
"The phones will be 'postponed' if Google plays nice, or 'never gonna happen' if it doesn't."
I think Engadget has totally misread this one.
@(Unverified)
Right... its called Motorora powered by Androi 2.2
@(Unverified)
What this means is that the Chinese and others will realize that being dependent on US products is detrimental and they'll move to alternatives and locally developed things. Sort of like how we moved away from dependency on foreign oil.
Oh wait..
@Macmee At least they get uncensored Google search results in China while most Google searches in the west are censored to meet government requirements. Of course the attitude of western governments is "it's only evil when China are doing it. It's fine when we do it".
The west gets worse every day while China's situation is rapidly improving and I'm sure it won't be long before "Anyone else happy they don't live in China?" will be "I wish I lived in China".
@PaulMdx
I'm thinking the same thing. Its Google that needs to bow down or the phones will never be released. Don't do it Google. F**k censoring search results!!
@Frith
Please tell me I'm missing some blatant sarcasm or you have some proof of the assertion that western nations censor more than China.
@Macmee
Ha, you wish you lived here. The food, the money, the girls.
Have fun in NYC with the whole economic meltdown guys.
@Frith Soooo you work in the Chinese Propaganda department then? (i'm sure you probably refer to it as public relations though...)
@7egend
the china bubble is bound to burst soon leaving it in turmoil!
@cherryboom
I am glad someone remember that. China knows better. It is a fight neither can win. They can't win economically either. Honestly, everybody forgets they make nothing we can't make and make better than they do. They just do it cheap with virtual slave labor. Thats all they have going for them. 1.5 billion people.
@(Unverified)
newsflash guys, talking about wars and nukes on the internet doesn't make you any cooler or tough.
@theedude
No, but it doesn't make them wrong either.
@(Unverified)
What China should do is kick them out altogether. Then they should forge stronger ties w/ Google's competitors (Palm, Apple, MS, Yahoo...) and really teach them a lesson. That was very ballsy of Google (I guess they dont have two 'O's for nothing).
@Wesscoast
"Ha, you wish you lived here. The food, the money, the girls."
Huh? Dont get me started on the 'food'. And what girls?? The male:female ratio is horrible and forecasts say that by 2020 a few dozen million Chinese males wont have a female partner.
@(Unverified)
It is time for us all to teach our children mandarin.
Say goodbye to Tibet, Good-Bye to the USA's dominance in the world. Say good bye to Morotocla, and Elgin and Hamilton wacthes. Are Shcwin bicycles made here anymore? What do we have left? Harley-Davidson? You all joke about teh Robot Overlords! Fools! Lyndon la Rouche and L. Ron Hubbard control your minds! I am going to learn Mandarin so that when our new Chinese overloards arrive, I will be getting a good job as an American-English to Mandarin translator. While YOUR families are living in the new American shanties, working for low wages to build electronic goods for the New Rising Chinese Ruling classes, I and MY family will be living well as we translate for the new Chinese rulers!!!!
I want my MTV!!! Tienamen Square was NEVER HAPPENED!!!!
@Macmee
yup i'm so sick and tired of china's bullsh*t.
@(Unverified)
Ain't gonna hurt china, all china cares about is its export and real estate where all the corrupt officials are making tons of money, if somehow google can trying to do something there, might actually trigger some change
Does not make much sense to release Android there if the Chinese government blocks GMail, Google Search, Maps, Orkut and so on..
The biggest selling points (not for me) of Android is actually this kind of integration.
@Mr w00t
+1, I don't know why you're not "Highest Ranked" yet, that's a great point. One of the reasons my change from the iPhone to Android was seamless was because I'm already an avid Google services user.
Willing to bed that a substantial percentage of Samsung / Motorola's (and every other electronics manufacturer's) components come from China, they'll switch sides pretty quick if China decides to play hardball!
@psc2
Depends on whether or not you're considering Taiwan as part of China or not.
@psc2
Let them switch sides. Here's the question.. who are they gonna sell their products too if they do. Of the 1.5 billion people less than 200 million of them live at working / middle class level the rest of the world does. They can make all they want, but if they have no one to sell it to...
@gerrrg Taiwan is not a part of China, well at least to the west anyways and is not affected by the boycott. China will be a force to be reckoned with and China's neighbors are not happy that the US is helping out their enemy by taking and giving them $$$. There is a big difference between the Censoring done in the US and the censoring done in China/Iran/Saudi Arabia and North Korea and if you are not knowledgeable about that Wiki-It.
@ZLiberator To the average citizen, censorship doesn't really effect your life or even hinder you internet usage. The things that China censors are sensitive topics that taint their image (like the Tienanmen Square incident), but how many people actually search for that? Think about it, how many Americans search for "Watergate Scandal" in their daily life? So even if it is censored, almost no one looks for it.
Plus, the Chinese communist party has only been in power for ~50, most people have experienced these events (e.g. Tienanmen) first hand, they don't need to search for them on the internet....
Its the most logical move with China. Since Google makes money from having people surf the web, less web means less revenue for big G. And yes, they wont settle for a half baked internetz.
And yes, it will be KIRF'd anyways. So what the heck.
Apart from >10 ppl in the US, nobody cares. Esp not the Chinese.
There are barely any Android phones in Asia so its not like we'll be "deprived". The biggest players are Nokia, Samsung, SE, LG & Moto. All of them apart from MOTO has other platforms to fall back on & considering how valuable the Chinese market has been for Moto's bottom line I doubt the "postponement" is going to last very long.
@Munk
Symbol Fail.
@bwl d'oh!
They'll laugh in google's face. The hedgehog is not afraid of naked a$$.
@nigel
The hedgehog isn't naked anymore, he has million-dollar pants, with the fly down.
Just find it funny how Google is now putting up a fight after going into china with much stricter regulations and the Chinese government was just trying to find into to see if they where following the rules HA HA HA. But!, atop of that there going to be one of the companies running web 2.0 that have centralized servers in the U.S. Witch means that they WILL be able to control anything on the U.S. web. Pretend to make it better over there while building the same system here.
I just see diversions and hypocrisy.
@NeatOman I just see grammar and spelling errors
@amneziac Just grammer
@amneziac That's the funniest thing I ever read.
If anyone could force China to change, I would think Google would be it. Ballmer appears willing to sell his soul for a yearly increase in profit, so I'm guessing Microsoft likely will enjoy the rewards of however this confrontation is resolved, whether it is looser restrictions in China, or a China without Google.
@gerrrg
I'm sorry to pour cold water on your kumbaya here, but a bunch of Chinese folks staged a real protest against the Communist government 20 years ago, and were crushed by tanks and guns.
This is a spat over search engines and phones. China doesnt give a fig over some hippie US company with a weird name pulling out of a market that everyone else is making bank off of in a cruddy world economy.
Google wasnt making anything in China anyway, so there "stand for freedom" is nothing more than a nice PR cover for them running up the white flag because that Chinese search engine was eating there lunch.
@LAY "running up the white flag because that Chinese search engine was eating there lunch"
Really? I thought Google was gaining marketshare over there?
Don't forget to think about the next step. Where are mobile phones manufactured? Right, China. Maybe the production of some (future) Google Phones will also be suddenly delayed...
@jankranendonk
yes i was just thinking about that. weird for google to threaten with their phones when they're built in china
@jankranendonk
Goggle is just a name put on the phone, like say Verizon tagging their phones. The phones are made by other companies, and most of them are Korean. I doubt goggle pulling out of a 300Million person billion dollar market will make a dent. Someone will pick up. Its a gold mine.
@jankranendonk
Yep, Google could try to make phones somewhere else. Maybe not so easy as it does not have any factories. Nokia has manufacturing of its own in Korea, Finland, Hungary, Romania, Mexico, Brazil, India and of course China. Makes bit more sense.
does anyone else see potential political problems forming for the United States because of google's threats?
@Nick Brown
Just google alone.. NO.. if join by Microsoft, Oracle, Sun micro, Motorola, HP.. maybe... but these companies got no balls just bowing their heads for the sake of profit...
@pointdexler
If Google actually incited the American consumer to rise up and boycott these other brands until they refused to cooperate with China's censorship then maybe these companies would join the cause. The problem is that all the American consumer does is complain about the government regulating everything, which results in more deregulation and more jobs, money and power moving to China, or they complain about the government not regulating enough, all the while sitting on their extra-wide asses buying up products made in China. Goodness forbid that people actually go without their iPhones, Windows or anything made in China or by anyone who supports Chinese censorship in order to make a point via consumer activism.
With all the hub-bub over "socialism taking over this country" I'm surprised that so many people are working hard to defend or are just indifferent about our current capitalist system which is actively supporting Maoist communism. If people gave a damn, they'd be burning every single product they could find that was stamped with the words "Made in China" and at least start exclusively buying products from developing countries with a stable democracy.
@bernardino
rhetoric != strategy
ignorance != knowledge
consumer != citizen
fantasy != reality
Some people play way too much video games.
@bernardino
Good points but your point on "they'd be burning every single product they could find that was stamped with the words "Made in China" well.... that won't happen since 70-80 percents of everything are Made in China..unless you want to pay 5 times more for a toaster Made in USA.. that is the cause and a difficult choice for consumer to ignore..
Umm. Aren't their phones *manufactured* in China, thereby mooting any potential withholding of said phones?
If you read the original article from the BBC, it says that Internet Explorer was apart of the problem with the Gmail hacks. I loled.