English tech media, sometimes including us, always love to report this type of news: XXX site(s) is/are blocked in China. I found it’s really boring, as the majority of Chinese Internet users actually dose NOT care about the existence of any of them, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook whatever. So services are not accessible from China, fine, not big deal?! We understand People who are reporting or reading this may expect some change, but be realistic, the situation could be like this for another long while, I am sure.
However, when you think over about this from another angle. It’s been years, none of the replacements of these un-accessible services is Good enough and make us proud. I mean, it’s fine even if we don’t have Google, Facebook etc, as long as we can develop some similar service with the same quality. But so far we don’t have any, that sucks and we should feel embarrassing!
I am a big fan of Google, I am still using Google for web search in China, and am even a paid user of gmail even though I have to suffer its unstability from time to time. But that’s just a small piece of Google offers to the human being. When I am in San Francisco, I see friends using Google NOW and Voice search which is accurate and efficient; using Google map to find places and direction, and Google Navigation for free navigation; using Google plus and Google Calendar to share and organize your life moments; and using Google Drive to collaborate with colleagues on work; using Google Wallet to check-out at street shop. Google is so powerful, and so useful.
But look at what Baidu’s doing? Baidu’s the No.1 in web search and operating like money machine because Google’s out, but for the consumer, what else impact it is bringing to our daily life? I am not aware of any. RenRen, the so-called Chinese Facebook, seems completely losing its way since its IPO, a company lives with no dream!
Google, Facebook is changing the world, but no one can change China. Give us some service which are good enough to make us forget about Google, Facebook etc, can we?
Only Apple is avalable in China, it may has great chance, but it changes China from totally different way, the Apple’s hardware, is definitely changing the way of how chinese spend the money on digital life.
You should be able to use all of google services I don’t really understand why china have banned them, http://www.sextoys2you.co.uk/rabbit-vibrators
Fair article. I’m a foreigner and use Google and Facebook and find Baidu is not good enough (yet). But I’m sure they’ll catch up. Conversely some things are working better, Sina Weibo is way better than Twitter in my opinion (even better than Facebook) 😉
But yes I’d like to have a better Baidu offering, like syncing my locations between mobile app and desktop….
Sorry but this kind of attitude is exactly the reason why Baidu and RenRen is garbage. Without competition everything will be transformed into a piece of shit in the long run. And the chinese intranet shows that every day. Google is only so good at searching because it had to be better than all the other player in the first place to be choosen. Baidu was just choosen to be the official search engine no question ask.