Tankman fait son apparition sur Google en Chine : Actualités : A. Baidu shares soar as Google weighs leavi. Baidu, the biggest search engine in China, is reaping a windfall from Google's threat to pull out of the country. The company's stock jumped $47.40, or 12 percent, to $433.89 Wednesday. Baidu handles about two-thirds of all search queries in China. It stands to grow even bigger if Google - its second-place rival with a little under a third of the market - pulls out of the country. Google Inc. operates in China under rules that restrict some pornographic and politically sensitive material from showing up in its search results. But after uncovering cyber attacks originating in China against human rights activists and U.S. companies, Google said it will stop censoring its results and may pull out of the country entirely. UBS analyst Wenlin Li said Baidu Inc. is the winner either way. Still, the analyst argues a pullout is the most likely scenario.
Li upgraded Baidu's stock to "Buy" from "Neutral" and raised its price target to $523 from $380. Google's potential China exit and the revenue hit | Between the. Wall Street analysts were scurrying Wednesday to assess the bottom line impact on Google's current and future revenue if the search giant nixes its business in China. The consensus: Leaving China will be a negligible hit to 2010 revenue, but a long-term strategic issue. On Tuesday, Google took on the Chinese government in a very public fashion (Techmeme). Following a cyberattack, Google said it would stop censoring its search results. The company added it may also pull out of China completely. Also see: Google's showdown with China: Does it make sense? The risk-reward analysis seems to add up in Google's favor and the company certainly didn't take its China showdown lightly.
Here's a recap of analyst comments on Google's move and what it may mean to the company's bottom line: Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster: We believe there is a 35% probability the company will cease operation in China, but expect a dialog between the Chinese government and Google to try to resolve the issues. Researchers identify command servers behind Google attack. VeriSign's iDefense security lab has published a report with technical details about the recent cyberattack that hit Google and over 30 other companies. The iDefense researchers traced the attack back to its origin and also identified the command-and-control servers that were used to manage the malware. The cyber-assault came to light on Tuesday when Google disclosed to the public that the Gmail Web service was targeted in a highly-organized attack in late December.
Google said that the intrusion attempt originated from China and was executed with the goal of obtaining information about political dissidents, but the company declined to speculate about the identity of the perpetrator. Citing sources in the defense contracting and intelligence consulting community, the iDefense report unambiguously declares that the Chinese government was, in fact, behind the effort. The iDefense report initially stated that malicious PDFs were crafted to deploy the malware that was used in the attack. Google v. China: the Chinese government reacts. The Google/China story has enough legs to qualify as a "centipede" at this point.
After saying that it would no longer censor Chinese search results and that it was ready to pull out of China, Google also admitted to being the victim of a sophisticated cyberattack that went after more than 30 companies. The immediate aftermath of the announcement was a media feeding frenzy—and that was before the Chinese government's various departments even began reacting to the news. Now that they have, it's clear that Google and China are on a collision course, and that the US government is ready to get involved on Google's side.
If you've had difficulty keeping up with the story, have no fear: here's a roundup of the news you need to know. Twists, turns, and U-turns An inside job? It's little more than an anonymously sourced rumor at this point, but Reuters says that insiders from Google's own Chinese office may have been involved in the cyberattack on the company. It's for your own good. DC U-turn.