I'm just wrapping up a day at L.A. BarCamp, kind of a low-key Demo Day for Web 2.0 geekitude.
Mack Reed, over at L.A. Voice is blogging the whole thing.
But I had to blog one...a significant Web guy, who I'm sworn not to name, just publicly - in front of an audience including almost a dozen Yahoo! staffers - called bulls**t on Yahoo for turning in journalist/blogger Yahoo users to the Chinese government to be jailed.
To quote: "Why haven't you quit your jobs? How do you sleep at night?"
Absolutely right.
YESSS!!!
Bravissimo to him. Abso-god-damn-lutely.
I hope it was Zawodny.
Yahoo bought into China's Alibaba.com, and in return the Chinese got $1 billion and Yahoo's services as "Little Brother".
Their rationalizations about being "legally compelled" to turn informant are crap. If Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft weren't so many Hong Kong prostitutes, they'd force China to accept privacy standards or face being shut out of internet markets themselves.
Frankly, I don't understand know why Yahoo! even bothers over here in China anymore.
They're going to wind up as roadkill over here anyway because the local companies like Baidu et al offer a far superior and more relevant experience for the locals, and because Jack Ma and Alibaba have taken Yahoo! for a serious ride.
If Yahoo! was smart they'd save themselves and everybody else a lot of headaches, fold up their tents, and leave China to companies who know what they're doing. At the same time, they could claim the moral high ground versus everyone else and gain themselves some goodwill in places where they will actually make a little money.
I'm glad someone said it out loud!