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Google to close doors in China
Google has decided to stop censoring its results in China and could end up closing its operations and shutting down its search engine there, the company said Tuesday. The decision follows an attack on Google’s servers in December that targeted the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, Google said in a blog post. “These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered — combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web — have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, wrote in the post. In mid-December the company detected a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” coming from China on its infrastructure that resulted in some of its intellectual property being stolen, Drummond wrote. He didn’t disclose exactly what had been stolen.
Is Google really fed up with censorship and spying in China?
Tech spending set to rebound
The worst is over for technology spending and the sector is set to rebound this year, according to a new report from Forrester Research. The analyst firm expects U.S. IT spending to grow by 6.6 percent in 2010 after plummeting 8.2 percent in 2009. On a global basis, IT expenditures will jump 8.1 percent in U.S. dollars and 5.6 percent based on local currencies. Forrester is making its predictions even though final data for the fourth quarter of 2009 isn’t in yet. It’s basing that confidence on recent signs of economic recovery around the world, including strong earning reports from vendors such as Oracle and the increased availability of credit.
Cisco to open up doors in China
Cisco Systems is adding a China business unit to its Asia division, the company said late Monday, highlighting the strength of the Chinese market and Cisco’s efforts to grow in the country. China, Hong Kong and Taiwan will fall under the company’s new Greater China unit starting next month, Cisco said. Japan will retain its own unit and the rest of the Asia-Pacific region will remain a joint unit. Cisco’s market share is lower in China than in almost any other country, and the company is likely looking to change that, said Naresh Singh, a principal analyst at Gartner. Investment in IT by the government and by state-owned enterprises is set to continue fueling China’s market for networking equipment, making the country an attractive market.
Store anything on Google Docs
Google is opening up its Docs hosted office productivity suite so that users can store any type of file in it, giving the popular software-as-a-service product an important online storage component. The functionality will be rolled out over the coming weeks to all Docs users, both the ones who use the stand-alone suite as well as those who use it as part of the broader communication and collaboration Apps suite for organizations. Now, Docs users will be able to store all their important files in a single place online, where they can access them from anywhere and share them with other people.