China's Online Rise to Power

China has been a country rising in power from conducting business worldwide, practically everything sold in the U.S.A is made in China. Now China is coming into the power of the web, the population has increased to 457 million which is up 19% from 2010. Baidu, a search engine, strengthened its share of the Chinese market, while Google dropped. Baidu increased to 75.5%. Google dropped from21.6% to 19.6%.

Baidu has created a blog, which will be in English as to reach global audience that follows China and Chinese society. “China's Internet culture is fascinating," said Kaiser Kuo, Baidu's Director of International Communications. "The Web is where all the new Chinese memes are born, where celebrities-for better or for worse-are created, where new writers hone their skills, and where songs become hits. The Internet has become the crucible of contemporary Chinese culture, and is the de facto public sphere of Chinese life, where ideas are exchanged, often with remarkable candor."

In addition China has launched their own online map service. Google has yet to apply for a Web mapping license in the country.  This took four years to gather all the satellite images, which were collected from 2006 to 2010. This map service is provided free of charge. In regards to this I believe that China will be able to grow stronger in the online market, and likely to extend to other countries. 

ONLINE PIRACY CAN IT BE STOPPED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To talk about online piracy, I will have to talk about mIRC. MIRC is a massive internet chat relay that enables users to communicate, share, play or work with others on the networks. This enables users to share music to each other, which is peer to peer. This program was created in 1995, and is still alive and kicking today due to the fact that it is a chat client. The government cannot shut it down, even though people share files on it that could be or is pirated. So looking at this program which enables peer to peer sharing of music, which has been running for over a decade, shows that online piracy will not be stopped anytime soon.

I would like you to take a look at a report by Greg Sandoval, which shows how little cases have been brought to attention involving online file sharing. In the article it states that online piracy costs the U.S. economy billions and kills jobs, which harms the actors and musicians as well as caterers and truck drivers.

To look at the battles that the current legal system has concerning online music piracy, we have to also take a look at Lime Wire. LimeWire which was ordered to shut down in the year 2010, and has now completely shut down since December 31^st 2010. LimeWire basically enabled people to share copyright-protected songs. By doing this they received a federal injunction in October of 2010. Take a look at an article done by Dana Wollman.

To me reading these articles and experiencing online music piracy myself, it shows that the Government are not doing much to stop it. Also there exist certain programs that they can’t shut down. I know for a fact that a lot of people use torrents to download music and movies to their laptops or computers. In my personal opinion for online music piracy to stop the government would basically have to shut down numerous sites and programs, but this is not possible due to the fact that certain of these sites are not based in the U.S. and the U.S. government cannot shut them down. 

ONLINE PRIVACY!!

Online privacy, what is it? Is it where people think they are searching the web without being invaded, by seekers of information? Or do they actually surf the web without being spied on for information? I for one say that online privacy does not exist, for even when you are shopping online for gifts or personal items, your Facebook page the next day has an advertisement for the same things you were looking for. You can read about someone who had this same experience here, and how they talk about online marketing, which could be a form of invading your online privacy.

To me online privacy is up to you the person surfing the web, for most of the time we put information out there without even realizing it until it is too late. Here are a few websites that say how to protect you online privacy; Electronic Frontier Foundation, Media Awareness Network, and Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Here are a few tips of what the EFF says to protect,

•  Do not reveal personal information inadvertently – set up your browsers to not provide your real name and e-mail addresses, while you search the web.
• Turn on cookie noticies in your web browser, and use cookie management software
• Keep a "clean" e-mail address
• Do not reply to spammers for any reason
• Examine privacy policies and seals
• 
  
  The Media Awareness Network has mostly the same tips and then some where you can read them at Media Awareness Network.

At the Electronic Privacy Information Center site they show snoop proof email application, among others such as cookie busters, HTML Filters, and EMAIL and File Provacy, just to name a few they have there.

To me online privacy is non existent, also I have asked some people I know and they have the same opinions and some of them even use these programs to protect themselves. Do the programs work? That is the question that must be answered. the majority of the people I spoke to say yes but a few said no. So is it safe to say that these programs work at protecting our online privacy? 

GROUPON is it a good Idea for Google to buy it?

Groupon? What do I know about it, not much for I don’t use it and haven’t heard of it until recently when I saw my friend using it. I have ventured to the site to look at it. I found that the site is for group buying of a certain deal and the deal changes on a regular basis to different types and different stores. As said in an article by Kara Swisher, GROUPON  founded in 2008 has taken off like a roman candle and is dominating the vast market for social shopping. Groupon’s fast-growing revenue and profitability makes it much less discouraging. In my opinion Google should be lucky enough to purchase Groupon, I think it is a very good idea for Google to acquire the company while it is still young. 

Google has offered $6 billion to acquire Groupon, and I thought that it was a sure deal it would go through. But while writing this blog, I came across an article that has stated that Groupon has turned down the offer from Google. Eric Savitz wrote the article. Mr. Savitz says that he is speechless, to how Groupon has turned down the offer of $6 billion, I repeat $6 billion. In his same article Mr. Savitz says that Groupon could turn into a monstrous stand-alone business, and that could be one of the many reasons Groupon has turned down the offer of $6 billion. 

Groupon, saves people money, brings revenues to businesses, and also to themselves, no one really loses in the type of deals Groupon brings to the table. Groupon provides exposure to a lot of places that out of towners and sometimes even locals would have no idea these places existed. I would like to see Google acquire Groupon, just because in my opinion Google will make it so much better in the long run.

In my opinion Google should of offered more than $6 billion, even though it is more than enough for such a young company like Groupon, which averages $50 million in revenue every month. Groupon would've probably taken Google's offer under serious consideration, even though as of late the deal could still go through if both parties resolve their issues. In addition Groupon probably turned them down just to get publicity, cause right now it is in the news more than normal, and people are talking.