You’ve probably heard about the fact that Google is un-censoring its Chinese search results, and threatening to leave China if the government doesn’t like that. Everyone and their grandmother is blagging and twattering about whether this makes Google the most saintly Lawful Good level 20 Paladin in the history of the world, or whether they weren’t making money in China and are using this as an excuse to spin that as a positive.
Never mind that. Look at their press release, which states the reason why they decided to pull out now:
In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.
First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.
Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. [Emphasis added]
Excuse me, but why is nobody talking about the fact that the Chinese government was trying to hack into Google?
But Zacqary, you have no way of knowing that the Chinese government was responsible for this!
Is that so, Helvetica Bold 10 Medium Blue? Well, do you have any suggestions for anyone else who would have the desire to spy on human rights activists?
Well, no, not really…
See, this is a much bigger story. It’s not about whether Google has grown the first corporate conscience to ever exist in the history of the world. It’s about the fact that the Chinese government is committing acts of information warfare on multinational corporations.
This is kind of a big deal, guys. Do journalism and shit. Come on. Seriously.
In Which The Geeky Political Drama Regarding HTML5 Video is Explained By a Kindergarten Crayon Drawing
Okay, you see, there are some major advances to watching videos on the web that everyone would be able to experience right now, except all of the browser makers are fighting over what type of video standard to use. It may be confusing to you, so I drew you a picture to explain it in the distinctive art style of Zacqary Adam Green at age five:
You see, Theora and H.264 are shooting guns at each other and Theora is shouting about freedom and H.264 is talking about money and Firefox is a fox and he likes Theora and Opera is a singing fat lady and she likes Theora too and Apple is an apple with leaves and a bite out of it and it likes H.264 and Google is a rainbow and it likes both of them and Dirac is hiding in his room and crying because nobody pays attention to him.
There. Now you know.