[AusNOG] [OT] Google criticises Australia on internet filter plan

[Andreux Fort]

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 12:37 PM, John Edwards <john at netniche.com.au> wrote:
>
> On 24/03/2010, at 9:10 AM, Andreux Fort wrote:
>
>>   Rumor says
>> it's very hard to actually get your money out of China once you've
>> made it,
>
> Mcdonalds had an interesting approach in 1990's Russia where their profits were used to purchase real estate that was exclusively rented to visiting foreigners paying in US dollars. I can only imagine that this is even easier in an Internet-banking connected world, and certainly not the real problem for the likes of Google.

Agreed in that I don't think it's difficult for the likes of Google to
get their money out.  I was mostly referring to the fact that the
engineering for China is surely complicated, and the network engineers
are stoked they don't have to deal with phantom link disappearance and
the other fun games they probably had to.  I'm sure it'd annoy you if
you have the gov't coming into your colo and doing dodgy stuff with
your international circuits. Oh, my mistake; I'm sure it will annoy
;-).

I must admit I'm not surprised or impressed that they got OUT of China
(would have been impressed had they said "No thanks" in 2006 - it's
not like they didn't know they would have this ideological difference
then).  But I guess you have to make mistakes to be sure that they
were in-fact mistakes, and given how American it is to not admit one's
mistakes, the PR spin is what it is.  I just don't buy that the reason
they got out is "all ideological differences".  Perhaps Sergey Brin
finally got his way, and good for him, from what I can tell, he's the
only normal-ish one of the three of them.

> John Edwards

-- 
Andreux Fort (afort at choqolat.org)