The Internet has been envisioned as many different aspects since the beginning; starting as an information educational network to an almost anything goes libertarian world. As it has become adopted across the world, various governmental organizations have tried, some with success and some without, to dictate domestic rules across the Internet.

Governmental organizations are not alone in this regard as multi-national corporations have been trying to push governmental organizations or the United Nations to impose rules favorable to the respective corporation that goes against the core of what a libertarian-viewed Internet is supposed to be about. Napster’s free music shut-down, Comcast’s P2P filtering, and so forth are examples of these aspects to re-make the Internet into a more structured system that is (in their opinion) more conducive to business.

It is in this same way Google’s concept that brands are an answer to the Internet not being very conducive for business and thus Google’s CEO calling the Internet a cesspool:

“Brands are the solution, not the problem… Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”

Yes, the answer was to allay fears over Google trying to take over the role of publishers and advertisers, but instead Google’s CEO let out an interesting view into what Google wants to change with the Internet beyond what Google has already done with its massive permeance (some say monopoly) in search and other online aspects.

The thing is, many people do not always want to do business online and are often looking for information, games, data, forums, etc. that come from random sites that are not brands. In fact, if the site is successful enough, it could actually become a brand from the very “cesspool” Google’s CEO believes to be a problem.

Of course, we still are assuming what Google’s CEO considers as a “cesspool.” Malware sites? Spam blogs on blogger? Thin affiliate sites? There are many definitions that people consider, and for me one of things that I strongly believe is that brands are not the solution. Sure, they can help, but so can random sites that provide just what people need when browsing the Internet. There is no one solution to any cesspool (whether the Internet is/has one or not) when you have both small sites and brand sites doing many of the same things that people find harmful.

When news outlets hype things up without enough information or when every far away local disaster is “breaking news” that has to scroll across the screen, that is a cesspool of useless information that these brands are doing. Even inside of the SEO world with brand sites such as SEOmoz or WebmasterWorld hyping fears of the tests that Google does to its algorithm on a daily basis (in this case the use of AJAX for Google’s SERPs). These sites can provide useful information at many other points but when there is a hyping fear of things without enough proof as news to me that is a cesspool within the Internet that should not rank or show up.

Large and small sites, or brands and non-brands, these can all create cesspools within the Internet, and one should always be careful on believing there is only one answer to everything. It is that hubris that could lead to unforseen consequences that will not benefit Google in the future.

Update at 4:41PM:

The idea of whether Google should fix some of cesspool it has indirectly spawned from its own services such as Made For AdSense (MFA) sites is an idea put forth by John Andrews, but then the question becomes, where should Google stop fixing the web? Paid links, paid posts, and affiliate ads are livelihoods of many people (whether rightly or wrongly) that can and has brought up and then knocked down their living standards.

Regardless of the view on this matter, whenever one company has something close to total control, these problems manifest into greater issues that all sides begin to fear to some extent, particularly when there are black boxes into what goes on behind various search algorithms or when more trust is given to some sites than to others that can be placed solely on one company, whether fairly or unjustly.

In what is a yearly tradition now, the major search engines have released their top ten lists of searches, with some interesting ones coming from Google China. Now, keep in mind that the list below are from more educated and English-speaking China searchers (not counting the fact that most Chinese people use Baidu), but nonetheless provide some insight into China’s net generation.

From Sina Tech, the top ten fastest growing searches:

1. 陈冠希
2. 奥运会开幕式
3. 四川地震
4. 不合格奶粉名单
5. 艳照门
6. 画皮
7. 赤裸特工f.b.i.
8. 国足欢迎你
9. 刘翔退赛
10. 神七

The one I personally like the most is the humorous spoof on the “Beijing Welcomes You (北京欢迎你)” Youtube video shown below:

The Wall Street Journal’s China Journal also has some of the hottest new vocabulary for those who have a real interest in the current/modern net culture of China:

New vocabulary

1. Shanzhai: Originally referred to the mountain strongholds of bandits. Now, the term refers to all manner of knock-off, substandard or improvised goods, such as these makeshift vehicles.
2. 囧 : This is an ancient Chinese character, pronounced jiong, used to mean “light shining through a window” several thousand years ago (kind of what the character itself looks like), among other things. Recently it has found a new life among Chinese youth as an emoticon to express a bad mood, since it also looks like a face crying out in a pictographic version of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
3. Very yellow, very violent: The year’s first Internet catchphrase came from a CCTV interview with a 13-year-old girl, part of a program on the government’s new regulations on Internet censorship. Netizens who believed the girl had been coached by CCTV into making the statement lashed out against her, launching a human flesh search engine and numerous parodies.
4. Psoas Muscle: Another musical spoof regarding the Chinese soccer, this one aimed at the women’s team. It comes from one theory about the poor showing of the Chinese team: that it was due to the players’ relatively weak lower back muscles.
5. Three push-ups: Another Internet catchphrase, this one derived from an unconvincing alibi used in the death of a high school student.
6. 槑: This character, pronounced mei, is actually a variant of the word for plum blossom. But it also happens to look like a double version of the character 呆 (dai), which means silly or stupid. Hence 槑 now means “very silly or very stupid.”
7. Getting some soy sauce: Another catchphrase that originated with a man on the street’s don’t-bother-me response to an intrusive reporter.
8. Pick-up artist subculture: Men who see themselves as modern-day Don Juans, seducing women who are often married, sometimes targeting them for their money.
9. Phoenix man: Refers to a man who grew up poor and in the countryside, but thanks to their efforts and the support of others, is able to move to a big city and become successful. Phoenix men often hope to marry city girls but often encounter problems resulting from their different cultural backgrounds and habits.
10. Don’t Be Too CNN: This phrase emerged as a viral response to foreign media coverage of the protests in Tibet, interpreted by many Chinese as biased and inaccurate. A variant of the existing phrase “don’t be too CCTV,” which meant something more along the lines of “don’t be so serious.”

Slashdot humor:

“From the Download.com article: “It slows down your browsing. It makes some Web sites inaccessible for no discernible reason. It doesn’t even offer you any xiao long bao or pu’er tea for your troubles. But if you want to know what life behind the Great Firewall of China is like, then the Firefox plug-in China Channel is the cheapest and fastest way to experience using the Internet in China without actually being there.”

Okay, so it’s some plugin that uses a China IP proxy on download.com, humorous, but I recall you could get around it with *shudders* AOL five years ago…

SEOmoz’s article by shor provides a nicely laid-out way to understand the potential for China’s Internet population, however, it misses the point completely for today’s entrepreneurs (future-wise, learn Chinese and 好好学习!).

As the article stated, recently the number of Chinese online has surpassed the number in the US, making China the country with the most number of people online, yet with only a 20% Internet penetration rate. The missing points that should have been more strongly stressed? Many of those prefer going online for QQ–chatting (which I have been hearing a lot in the metro and wish BART could get to work underground) and mainly on their cell phone. mainly on their cell phone or on their computer playing games.

So the real central point that’s missing? Even though you have millions of people online, they are online for chatting on their cell phone which means few people are actually there to buy online–a larger concern for companies in my opinion that wish to make money in China now. The article has no graphs showing the amount of money made online, just the number of people, which only goes to show the lack of concern many times in the SEO community to look beyond pure traffic.

In any case, if you plan on expanding to China for an online business, prepare for a long-term investment rather than a short-term gain.

Sidenote: The article probably does not fit to the right audience for the post sadly when the first comment mentions that China has a Communist government–a comment that should have been sent back 10 years when it would have at least been semi-accurate. Yes, the party is called the Chinese Communist Party, but like anything one should quickly learn in life, just because someone likes to call themselves something, does not mean it is true.

[Note: been having my own problems with links within my blog leading to these "blocks" not sure why yet.]

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Hosting a website, nay, a secure website is not the easiest thing to keep up-to-date. I work with a variety of Google products everyday and sometimes I will need to use another computer that will not have my Google Accounts bookmark in the toolbar. So, like any naturally lazy Internet person, I will type in the website’s name into the search bar. In this case, I did a search for google accounts in order to get https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount.

When I click on the first link to go to Google Accounts, it seems Google has a problem (for the past few days now with a secure connection failing) with an invalid security certificate:

Whoops!

I talked briefly before about how NBC’s coverage of the opening ceremonies was done very badly with cutting to commercials and by trying to limit worldwide Internet coverage before NBC would show it within the US. However, the coverage of the competition during the 2008 Beijing Olympics has been very well laid covered and with a large amount of information for people who know little about China.

With each competition, NBC has been talking with many of the athletes and giving background on who they are and what they need without being too boring, too annoying, or too simplistic–a remarkable achievement when most of the media nowadays tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

What has me amazed is how positive the coverage has been for China and the Beijing Olympics in general. This may be the result of being gracious to the country hosting the games or due to the earthquake that China suffered. There have been many stories about China and what you can find there along with the history of China and even the interaction of China and the US. Some of these topics have covered:

• Chinese cuisine (both good and strange)
• Chinese Acupuncture
• Nixon going to China
• Kite flying
• Chinese athlete training programs
• Beijing’s monuments and parks
• Etc

What has made it particularly well-done is that they actually brought in journalists to stay and work within a foreign country and provide on-the-ground reports about the country, something that has been in dire need for those interested in international affairs.

Lastly, even many of the commercials have been geared towards China and the Olympics, providing very relevant ads that I think play very well to the audience watching. These relevant ads do far better when I actually enjoy watching them because they are interesting! Many of these ads have been very memorable including the Beijing Olympics Mummy dual TV commercial.

Budweiser, GE, and some Canadian apparel HBC(?)

TrendsSpotting has a very nice PowerPoint presentation of the online market of China. It is rather introductory, but if you are just starting to get into the Chinese online market, has some very pertinent information to see:

Google China has finally launched its localization initiative in China against Baidu by launching its own mp3 music search and mimicking Baidu’s successful mp3 search, first found through Music 2.0 and later noted through Search Engine Land. Music 2.0 has the basic scoop:

[T]he much talked about Google MP3 Search service is here at www.google.cn/music [a]nd it’s certainly game on as they take on Baidu’s very illegal mp3 search with legal links from its search results provided by local music service Top 100.cn for free streaming, free mp3 downloads and lyrics supported by advertising revenue, and paid Caller RingBack Tones (CRBT) via China Mobile - with rights being cleared by most major labels (with probably one major holdout), publishers and a number of domestic labels for mainly Chinese music[.]

However, Music 2.0 notes that Jay Chow songs had yet to be allowed for download believing that no deal had been established yet, but when looking at it now, there are in fact many Jay Chow （周杰伦) songs able to be downloaded (下载), so likely Google rolled it out before it had searched for those songs:

What has really ticked me off was the fact that Google China decided to side itself with the hated regional restrictions that many DVD player makers on computers like to restrict–if you live anywhere outside of China, you get the following note:

抱歉，谷歌不在您所在的地区提供您所需要的服务。

[loosely translated: Sorry, you are not in the correct area for Google (mp3 search) to service you.]

Ironically, it is also showing this to Google’s own bot making the page very non-SEO friendly:

Now, you can always just check your IP, learn about IP proxies, and get a China open proxy (transparent), to avoid this Internet censorship, but you would still have to search (and understand) Chinese to find music you want.

So, Google once again enters in very late, does some evil, but at least is doing something to compete through localization, even if it it has to copy Baidu:

So, what does Google China’s mp3 search offer?

• Very basic level of music trends (Baidu’s is far superior offering multiple trends on one nice page)

• Ability to download songs without DRMs for the first time

• The words from the song so you can sing along (always useful)

• Streaming, but be prepared to accept the ever-so-fun EULA:

I have always been a strong believer in neo-liberalism and a strong proponent that global trade will democratize a country over time as the country’s citizens will eventually clamor for more political freedom in order to expand their economic freedom. We have seen this already happen in a variety of places around the world, the latest being China.

Business people are allowed to be in the CCP in order to give them a greater say in how the state should run things and people in the cities will even protest ridiculous regulations (such as limitations on the type of dogs Beijing people can own).

The idea is that this process slowly begins to open up the country as more and more rights are demanded until some point either around the average affordability of a car (usually around $5000 GDP per capita) or when a government basing its power on improving the economy fails to continue doing so. At this point, the people clamor for a change in government that leads to some kind of democratic society.

Usually I believe that this can be supplemented with external factors where other nations, corporations, or NGOs will help push for greater liberalization by mandating certain conditions be met before investments are made. China in fact had to meet a number of factors in order to be accepted into the WTO and for the most part, it was able to meet many of those commitments.

Unfortunately, this often implies that these corporations or NGOs have a larger amount of authority or integrity of beliefs than the non-democratic nation. The International Olympic Committee has shown that it does not really stand for their own principles:

Some International Olympic Committee officials cut a deal to let China block sensitive websites despite promises of unrestricted access, a senior IOC official admitted on Wednesday.

Outrage is definitely pouring across the Internet for what the IOC has done, even making Robert Vance post some harsh words against the IOC:

[T]he International Olympic Committee (IOC) is now officially an accomplice to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and all of the Chinese government’s attempts to censor free speech and block personal freedoms in China. According to a report from Reuter’s on Wednesday, “some International Olympic Committee officials cut a deal to let China block sensitive websites despite promises of unrestricted access, a senior IOC official admitted on Wednesday.” Cut a deal? There was no deal. The IOC ‘rolled over and played dead’ just like it has been doing since it bestowed the Olympics upon Beijing 8 years ago. The IOC leadership has proved itself once again to be spineless; it might as well be just another arm of the CCP. The IOC has brought shame upon itself as well as upon the Olympic Games with the way in which it has allowed Beijing to censor free speech.

Such events makes me wonder whether external events related to trade really is a form of economic liberalization or in actuality economic stablization. If the forces of democracy and freedom do not hold firm to some kind of principles, then trade may only be a force of economic stablization rather than a push towards democracy.

Any thoughts on this is greatly appreciated.

IGnatius T Foobar writes on Slashdot:

“Microsoft has developed a small plug-in device that investigators can use to quickly extract forensic data from computers that “may have been used in crimes.” It basically bypasses all of the Windows security (decrypting passwords, etc.) in order to eliminate all that pesky privacy when the police have physical access to your computer. Just one more reason not to run Windows on your computer.”

Think of how easy then it would be for Microsoft to provide backdoor access into its programs for the American government, definitely in the case if the US gets its hands on a Chinese laptop, but even more scary for the Chinese government, over the Internet with various programs that Microsoft provides to the American government.

Think of how easy it is already for other software makers to put in hidden software through rootkits as Sony previously did. This would make it quite easy for keystroke logging, password retrieval, and other tracking systems in order to get information on other governments.

Then again, how many people are gullible in just clicking on a friend’s IM link that opens up an .exe file?