There has been rumors of Facebook teaming up with China's #1 search engine, Baidu. Baidu came to prominence when it took over the search engine market after rivaling with Google and eventually became the top dog. What does it mean if Facebook teams up with Baidu? One way for Facebook to make money is to license its search algorithm or form strategic alliances to leverage its humongous information database.
Facebook issued the following statement: "Facebook is currently studying and learning about China, as part of evaluating any possible approaches that could benefit our users, developers and advertisers."
I think Facebook needs to be step carefully in this territory. China is known for fiercely controlling and censoring the internet there and I'm sure it would do the same with content on Facebook. Bringing Facebook into China would provide a huge platform for people to communicate and organize which is something the government there seems to generally work against. Facebook needs to be careful not to get pegged as supporting internet censorship in that country of giving up some of its ideals in order to enter the chinese market.
ReplyDeleteI agree with USC’s comment. Facebook definitely must be careful in their efforts to penetrate the Chinese market. The PRC government is obviously infamous for their internet censorship and control, but what would worry me even more is the amount of access the government will have to the information of users. In its Terms and Conditions, Facebook essentially has a contract with the users that makes everything that the user uploads (pictures, videos, etc.) property of Facebook. If the Facebook in China is controlled by the government in China (which it would be), there’s no telling what the government will do with the private information it could find on anyone. China’s internet history of censorship, control, and violations of privacy are already bad: just look at the case of Yahoo being coerced into giving private information of a user to the Chinese government, resulting in the imprisonment of a Chinese journalist for “leaking state secrets.” Facebook clearly wants the market, but is it worth sacrificing it’s ethics in order to do so? That might be a question Facebook will have to answer for themselves if something comes of this relationship with Baidu.
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