Category: Internet

China’s Internet: A New Censorship Move

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on September 06

Green Dam, the censorship software that the Chinese government wanted on all PCs sold in China, turned out to be a flop. Beijing’s still keen on exerting greater control over…

Is North Korea Behind Cyber Attacks?

Posted by: Moon Ihlwan on July 09

It’s easy to blame North Korea for nasty attacks on the global community. After all it is an international bogeyman facing sanctions by the U.N. for undertaking nuclear and missile…

China Censorship: After the Green Dam Fiasco

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on July 01

It’s not often that opponents of Internet censorship get to celebrate a victory of the Chinese government. Today’s one of those rare occasions. The official Xinhua news agency reported last…

China Censors Google Foreign Internet Searches

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on June 21

China is clamping down on the internet once again, this time by forbidding Google (GOOG) from linking to certain foreign websites with pornographic content and other material deemed harmful to…

China’s Internet Censors Hit Twitter, Flickr & Bing

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on June 02

More censorship news from China. With the 20-year anniversary of the suppression of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement two days from now, Beijing’s censors have gone after Twitter, Flickr, Bing…

The Facebook Controversy in Indonesia

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on June 01

Indonesians still seem to be talking about the suggestion by some Muslim clerics last week that the government should regulate Facebook to prevent users in Indonesia from trading gossip or…

Dog Bites Man. China Blocks YouTube

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on March 24

Google has confirmed that YouTube once again is down in China, apparently a victim of Chinese censorship. The video-sharing service is a favorite target of China’s censors; see this Eye…

Japan Farm Ministry’s Animated Video is a Sleeper Hit Online

Posted by: Kenji Hall on December 16

What’s the point of toiling away for months on a report that nobody will read? That is the sad fate of most policy papers published by Japan’s Agriculture, Forestry…

Sony Gets a Life-X

Posted by: Kenji Hall on September 10

Sony (SNE) has a reputation for making finely crafted electronics with clumsy software. That’s because the company’s engineers have long focused on cramming as many whiz-bang technologies into their products…

India Anti-Abortion Activists Target Google, Yahoo and Microsoft

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on August 19

The big three American Internet companies are facing what could be trouble in India, trouble that could also spill over into problems back home. India has a serious gender-imbalance problem;…

Is Peer-to-Peer Sharing The Same As Stealing?

Posted by: Kenji Hall on August 01

“This debate of piracy vs. business is a false proposition.” If Jamie King’s statement sounds anti-Establishment, that’s exactly how he intended for everyone to hear it. King is a member…

China leaves India on wrong side of digital divide

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on July 26

I’ve seen several stories trumpeting the much-anticipated news that China, with 253 million internet subscribers at the end of June, has officially overtaken the U.S. as having the largest online…

A Quarter of Internet Users in Northeast Asia

Posted by: Moon Ihlwan on July 25

Global entrepreneurs have closely monitored Northeast Asia to track new online trends and services — with good reason. Nearly a quarter of all Internet users in the world reside in…

What Happens to Yahoo in Asia?

Posted by: Kenji Hall on July 22

Now that Yahoo has made investor Carl Icahn a member of its board, what will happen to Yahoo’s operations in Asia? The company told shareholders, in a July 17 letter,…

Why I won’t pay for broadband at five star hotels in Vietnam

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on June 19

Hands up all you readers who hate paying internet connection fees at five star hotels when there is a perfectly good cafe nearby with free Wi-Fi. Whenever I’m in Ho…

eBay set to announce Vietnam deal

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on June 16

I’m quite excited at this, my first attempt to break a story by blogging. According to a well placed source with a tech venture capitalist outfit IDG in Vietnam, I…

Is China to Blame for India’s Cyber Problems?

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 06

The U.S. isn’t the only country victimized by cyber espionage that is blaming China. Something similar seems to be happening in India, too. American military and intelligence officials, as several…

Hollywood Might Like a Crackdown on China’s YouTube Imitators

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on March 11

All sorts of speculation in the blogosphere about what’s happening to Tudou, probably the top Chinese video-sharing site. Rebecca MacKinnon, the former CNN reporter who now teaches at the University…

A reprieve for China’s online video operators

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on February 06

So much for that scare. Chinese regulators spooked the country’s would-be YouTubes last month with new rules that, on their face, seemed to require government ownership for any company showing…

The myth of China’s online superiority

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on December 05

Are young Chinese really more cyber-savvy than Americans? Yes, says a recent survey by ad agency JWT and Barry Diller’s IAC. According to the survey (here’s a summary), 86% of…

Yahoo, eBay form trans-Pacific online auction market

Posted by: Kenji Hall on December 04

At first glance, eBay’s deal with Yahoo Japan, announced yesterday, seemed like the U.S. online auctioneer might be plotting a return to Japan. You’ll recall that five years ago a…

On Barry Diller’s China plans

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on November 26

On Friday, Barry Diller announced that his company plans to make a big push into China. Diller says that his company, IAC/InterActive Corp., will be putting $100 million into the…

Can Yahoo Deliver on Promise to Help Dissidents?

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on November 15

After more than a year of awful PR, it must be a big relief to Jerry Yang to start winning some praise for how Yahoo handles its China problem. Yahoo…

Alibaba Envy in India

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on October 31

With Alibaba’s $1.5 billion IPO – the biggest ever for a Chinese Internet company - scheduled to start trading in Hong Kong next week, some people in India are feeling…

YouTube China Censorship Update

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on October 29

If you’re in China and you want to watch something on YouTube, good luck. Google’s video service has been on the blink in China, possibly another victim of Beijing’s Internet…

China’s Internet Censors Strike Again

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on October 22

Google has confirmed that the search giant’s Chinese service was out of business for parts of last Thursday and Friday. “We’ve had numerous reports that Google.cn and other search engines…

Baidu’s Big Drop

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on October 12

First, the bad news for Baidu investors: the Chinese search engine’s stock price plunged $51 yesterday. Yes, fifty one dollars. In one day. The amazing news, though: Even after that…

Why India’s Internet connections are falling

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on October 08

Here’s some weird news from India: At a time when Internet usage is supposed to be on the rise, the number of Net connections in the country actually dropped in…

Death by Online Gaming? Really?

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on September 18

According to both AP and Reuters, the Beijing News is reporting that a 30-year-old Chinese man collapsed and died over the weekend after playing online games non-stop for three days….

An online fan club for China’s premier

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on September 02

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao - the unelected head of China’s government – may not have to worry about winning approval or votes from ordinary Chinese but he has cultivated his…

Japan’s Net Café Refugees

Posted by: Ian Rowley on August 28

Japan’s 24 hour internet cafes often double as places where revelers can hang out before the first bus or train home in the morning. With food, drink, showers and other…

Trouble for Yahoo in India

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on August 07

Out goes another Yahoo exec in Asia. Last November, it was the head of Yahoo China who left after only 42 days at the helm. (See this BusinessWeek story for…

For Baidu, even a setback is a win

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on July 23

Further confirmation that Google has a long way to go in China: Beijing-based research firm Analysys International has just come out with its Q2 report on the Chinese search market,…

A Shark Activist Targeting Alibaba

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on July 23

Can Alibaba.com stand up to pressure better than the Walt Disney Co. and Amazon.com? As I wrote the other day in this BusinessWeek story, activists opposed to the use of…

More grief from Google’s dorky Chinese name

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on July 17

Last year I wrote on the Asiatech blog about Google’s goofy choice of Chinese name. The company’s execs decided they wanted something that sounded a bit like “Google,” so they…

The Confucius Institute Apologizes

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on July 12

Anyone worried about whether China’s IPR pirates will ever change their ways, take heart from the tale of the little website China Expat and the battle that it has been…

Chinese Piracy and Confucius

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on July 11

You know the piracy situation is bad in China if even the Confucius Institute is implicated in unauthorized copying. Josh Gartner, a 27-year-old from Brooklyn who runs ChinaExpat, a Beijing-based…

Google’s new move in China

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on June 22

Google China has had a bit of a breakthrough. The company has received preliminary approval from the Chinese government for an Internet Content Provider (ICP) license. According to Google spokesperson…

Censorship showdown in India

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on June 15

Gangs on the rampage, issuing threats to owners of some Internet cafes and attacking others, tearing up places that allowed users to access information via the Net that some zealots…

Amazon’s rivalry in China heats up

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on June 06

Jeff Bezos was in China the other day to tout the growth of Amazon’s Chinese subsidiary, Joyo.com, which the Americans purchased in 2004. According to this report from Bloomberg, Bezos…

One battle China’s online censors can’t win

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 28

For a regime notorious for censoring the Internet, China’s government is having an awfully hard time fighting one of its main online enemies - porn. Beijing may have the upper…

Sex blogger arrested in China

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 21

According to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, the government has launched yet another campaign in its never-ending battle against Internet porn, politics and other “decadent and and backward ideological…

A blogger shortage in India?

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on April 25

Writing in Foreign Policy, Preeti Aroon looks into the surprisingly small number of bloggers in India. Aroon cites (unspecified) research showing that there are only 1.2 million bloggers in the…

Keeping Track of Laundry on Wireless Web

Posted by: Moon Ihlwan on April 17

Deliverymen from DHL and FedEx around the world keep records of their courier services in company-provided PDAs. From next month, South Korean laundry stores could keep records of laundry…

Spam scam and Hong Kong’s richest woman

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on April 16

Nigerian spammers have found a new fortune that they want to share with you. The alleged bonanza comes courtesy of Nina Wang, the eccentric billionaire who was reported to be…

No new Internet cafes in China

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on March 07

Internet cafes in China play a far more important role than in the U.S. and other Western countries: Since relatively few Chinese own PCs, millions of people depend on Internet…

Phishers find India

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on February 22

As readers of this blog can attest, lots of Indians are keenly competitive with the Chinese. But there’s one industry where Indians have been happy to lag behind China –…

Phishy China and Korea

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on January 31

For years, China and Korea have been prime targets for hackers and spammers. In both countries, it’s pretty easy for foreigners looking for proxies to use in attacks on computer…

Hu’s afraid of “Prison Break”?

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on January 25

It’s probably just a coincidence that Hu Jintao on Tuesday issued his latest call for more censorship of the Internet at the same time as the world’s political and business…

Google’s latest move in China

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on January 02

Google is making a move in China that might add to its PR problems in the rest of the world. According to this article in the Chinese press, the search…

Google Earth meets Wii

Posted by: Kenji Hall on December 13

Among the more bizarre uses for Nintendo’s Wii gaming console is this mashup written by one Joseph Coulston. It lets you control a Google Earth map with the buttons and…

Samung’s High-Speed Wireless Dream

Posted by: Moon Ihlwan on November 07

Predicting a boom in next-generation wireless services, Korea’s Samsung Electronics on November 7 rolled out a portable gadget (shown above) designed to let users talk, surf the Web and…

MySpace: coming soon to Japan?

Posted by: Ian Rowley on November 06

At a speech in Tokyo today News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch laid out his views on the economic and political challenges facing Japan and Asia in the 21st Century. In…

Google: How not to win friends in China

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on November 01

Last year, Google hired with much fanfare Kai-Fu Lee, the former exec from Microsoft whom Bill Gates had sent to China in 1998 to launch Microsoft’s Asia research center. Lee…

OhmyNews Isn’t Sailing Smoothly Overseas

Posted by: Moon Ihlwan on October 24

Seoul-based Web site OhmyNews is certainly a pioneering example of citizen journalism. It demonstrated the power of the participation of ordinary people in the news-gathering process with its coverage of…

YouTube Hits Delete Button on Pirated Japan Clips

Posted by: Brian Bremner on October 20

Google’s exposure to copyright violations followings its recent $1.65 billion acquisition of the hugely popular video-sharing site YouTube has been a big concern. To understand why, consider that YouTube has…

Time for a new strategy for eBay in China

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on September 26

What should Meg Whitman do about eBay in China? She made headlines back in 2003 when eBay took control of Eachnet, what was then China’s leading auction site. Later, Whitman…

Bloggers 1, Hon Hai 0

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on September 04

A big win for China’s bloggers. The country’s online corporate watchdogs yesterday scored a major victory with the announcement that Hon Hai Precision, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant that produces iPods…

Japan Inc. struggles to reach out to bloggers

Posted by: Kenji Hall on August 30

Calling Japan Inc. You need to find a way to reach more of Japan’s online community. That’s the latest message from PR powerhouse Edelman and blogosphere expert Technorati Japan. The…

eBay Begins Mobile Auctioning in Korea

Posted by: Moon Ihlwan on July 13

Will wireless auctioning a win-win? Certainly execs at eBay and South Korea’s leading mobile carrier think so. SK Telecom and Internet Auction, eBay’s Korean subsidiary, have forged an alliance to…

Yahoo China Vs. Global Music Industry

Posted by: Brian Bremner on July 05

The Yahoo China syndrome continues. First, the U.S. mega-portal gets a thrashing by U.S. lawmakers and human rights groups for supplying email data to Beijing authorities that led to the…

Chinese Net Censors Crackdown on Blogs

Posted by: Brian Bremner on June 30

China’s Net cops are at it again. A story here says Beijing has stepped up its campaign to censor information viewed as indecent or subversive on blogs and search engines….

A new crackdown on Internet cafes

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 17

Well that didn’t take long. On May 5th, bombs exploded at two Internet cafes in Hefei, the capital of Anhui province in southeastern China. Two people died. I mentioned in…

Who needs Wikipedia anyway?

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 11

Yesterday Baidu, China’s leading search company, announced first quarter numbers that were so good the company’s Nasdaq-traded stock price jumped by 37% in just one day. Baidu also announced that…

Hong Kong cracks down on Net movie pirates

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 10

Hong Kong’s movie industry used to rank up there with Hollywood and Bollywood in terms of output, but in the late 1990s the industry fell on hard times, largely…

Bombings at Chinese Internet cafes

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 07

Tragedy over the weekend at two Internet cafes in the central Chinese city of Hefei. According to Xinhua, a bomb exploded at one Internet café at 9:36 on Friday night,…

Google’s unpopular new Chinese name

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 03

For Google, nothing comes easy in China. The company had to fight in court against Microsoft just to hire the head of its China operation, former Microsoft executive Kai-Fu…

Why Google should be wary about buying Sina

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 01

My BusinessWeek colleague Gene Marcial reports that Google might be interested in taking over Beijing-based portal Sina. In response, Google has denied that it’s interested in the Nasdaq-listed company: The…

China’s cat killer and the latest Net crackdown

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on April 28

I learned something new this week: China has a snuff video problem. There’s a propaganda campaign underway in China right now, with online companies pledging to keep the Net clean…

Time Warner and News Corp. help China with its “Cultural Deficit”

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on April 22

A few days ago I blogged about the news that Time Warner’s AOL, which has been very low-profile in China since the collapse of its joint venture with Legend a…

AOL gets back into China

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on April 18

AOL and the Shanghai Media Group have announced plans for AOL to carry SMG programming on the U.S. company’s Chinese-language site. Government-owned SMG is the biggest fish in China’s media…

Awaiting Divine intervention at Taobao

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on April 08

Recently we ran a story in BW about the troubles that eBay has been having in China. The big problem for eBay is Jack Ma, the fast-talking former schoolteacher from…

Amnesty Int’l targets Yahoo

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on March 09

The pressure on Yahoo is increasing. During congressional hearings last month looking into the role American companies play in helping the Chinese government control the Internet in China, critics tore…

Risky blogging in Beijing

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on February 27

A few weeks ago I interviewed a Chinese blogger who said that, despite all the concern in the U.S. about Internet censorship in China and the role that American companies…