Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) 01 (May 08 - Jul 17)

[millionairemind]

March 16, 2010, 2.10 pm (Singapore time)

China again tells Google to obey the law

BEIJING - China on Tuesday again warned Google not to stop filtering its web search engine results, as rumours swirled about the company's plans following its threat to leave over censorship and cyberattacks.

The US Internet giant has said it could abandon its Chinese-language search engine and possibly pull out of China altogether after the hack attacks. It also says it no longer wants to bow to the Chinese government's web censors.

'We have all along maintained a policy of opening-up and welcome foreign investments in China. But the prerequisite is they should respect and abide by Chinese laws,' commerce ministry spokesman Yao Jian told reporters.

'We hope Google will abide by the law, no matter whether it continues to do business in China or makes other choices.'

The spokesman also said Beijing was 'opposed to politicising business issues' - an apparent jibe at the US government and lawmakers who have spoken out on behalf of Google and against Internet censorship in China.

Beijing tightly controls online content in a vast system dubbed the 'Great Firewall of China,' removing information it deems harmful - including pornography and violence, but also politically sensitive material.

Google threatened in January to abandon google.cn and perhaps leave China altogether over what it said were cyberattacks aimed at its source code and at the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

The company has since continued to filter results on google.cn, but says it will not do so forever.

'Google is firm in its decision that it will stop censoring our search results for China,' Google vice president and deputy general counsel Nicole Wong told the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee last week.

'If the option is that we'll shutter our .cn operation and leave the country, we are prepared to do that.'

China's minister of industry and information technology, Li Yizhong, warned Google last week that it would face 'consequences' if it were to violate Chinese law by ending its filters, saying such a move would be 'irresponsible'.

The Financial Times reported at the weekend that Google was '99.9 per cent' certain to move forward with plans to abandon google.cn, citing an unnamed source.

But Google China spokeswoman Marsha Wang said Tuesday that, for now, no changes had been made.

'Google has not stopped censorship. This is a rumour. We do not have any update to share,' she said. -- AFP.

[Blackjack]

Nobody is above... the great lall of China...

[millionairemind]

Mar 18, 2010
New Google TV platform?
WASHINGTON - GOOGLE and Intel have teamed up with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Internet to a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes, The New York Times said on Wednesday.

The newspaper said that Google has built a prototype TV set-top box, but the Web-enabling technology may be incorporated directly into TVs or other devices like Blu-ray players.

It said the TV technology was based on Google's open-source Android mobile phone operating system and runs on Intel's Atom chips.

The Times said the Google TV software would present users with a new interface for TVs that lets them perform Internet functions like search while also pulling down Web programming like YouTube videos. It would also allow Web applications like games or social networks to run on the devices, the newspaper said.

The Times said the project has been under way for several months but that none of the companies involved would comment publicly at this time. 'Google wants to be everywhere the Internet is so they can put ads there,' the Times quoted a person 'with knowledge of the project' as saying.

Web companies and electronics manufacturers have been exploring ways to bring the Internet to the television set for some time and a number of companies already offer set-top boxes and Web-enabled TVs. -- AFP

[millionairemind]

Nobody is above... the great lall of China...

I wonder when is Google going to flip China the bird??

[iam802]

From the article, seems like Google also starting their own hedge fund (highly possible..with so much information on hand...why not? frontrun the darkpools or algos??)

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-b ... ves-2010-3

[LenaHuat]

It will become too big to fail .

[millionairemind]

Finally someone flips China the bird...

Mar 24, 2010
Google 'is not god'

BEIJING - China's state media on Wednesday slammed Google after it effectively shut down its Chinese search engine, saying the US Internet giant was 'not god' and accusing it of working with US intelligence.

The newspapers said the company had made a huge mistake in the world's largest online market and would earn little sympathy from Chinese users, as it had politicised its dispute with Beijing over web censorship and cyberattacks.

Google on Monday stopped filtering search results in China and re-routed traffic from google.cn to an uncensored site in Hong Kong, but said it would maintain its sales and research and development teams on the mainland.

'For Chinese people, Google is not god, and even if it puts on a show of politics and values, it is still not god,' said the overseas edition of the People's Daily, the ruling Communist Party's mouthpiece. 'In fact, Google is not chaste when it comes to values. Its cooperation and collusion with the US intelligence and security agencies is well-known,' it said in a front-page commentary.

The paper said Google's decision 'makes one wonder about about all the big efforts that the United States has made in recent years to engage in an Internet war - perhaps this is an exploratory attack in a pre-dawn battle.' The English-language Global Times, a subsidiary of the People's Daily, also hit out at Google, saying it had made a 'huge strategic misstep in the promising Chinese market'.

The paper touted the improvement in China's business climate and warned foreign firms that they could face 'unprecedented' competition from homegrown companies, urging them to adapt to the 'transitional Chinese society'. 'A win-win situation is in the interests of both China and foreign businesses. Google's 'new approach' does not work,' it said. -- AFP

[millionairemind]

Google’s Profit Misses Some Estimates; Shares Decline (Update3)
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By Brian Womack


April 15 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., owner of the world’s most popular search engine, reported profit that fell short of some analysts’ estimates, a sign that online advertising may not be rebounding as fast as some had anticipated.

Net income in the first quarter rose 37 percent to $1.96 billion, or $6.06 a share, from $1.42 billion, or $4.49, a year earlier, the company said today in a statement. Leaving out costs such as stock-based compensation, profit was $6.76 a share. Estimates compiled by Bloomberg were as high as $6.91.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... cUJA&pos=1

[kennynah]

Do u believe that goog's earnings was doctored to signal their strength despite being kicked out of china?

[millionairemind]

Google's Latest Launch: Its Own Trading Floor
The search giant is hiring Wall Street vets to manage a $26.5 billion pile of cash

By Douglas MacMillan

BW MAGAZINE

Last fall, some unusual job listings began cropping up on Google's (GOOG) website. Amid the requests for programmers and engineers were postings for bond traders and portfolio analysts. By spring, tech blogs were speculating about what was going on at Google.

The answer was very un-Silicon Valley. Google, it turns out, has launched a trading floor to manage its $26.5 billion in cash and short-term investments. The hoard is the third-biggest cash pile among U.S. tech companies, after Microsoft (MSFT) and Cisco's (CSCO).
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/co ... topStories