Posts Tagged ‘Internet’
Opera 10.5-The fastest Browser in the world?
Here comes the another big challenge to competitors, when someone says that their product is best in the world. Yes!! Opera this time, with release of their Opera 10.5 on February 2, 2010 came the big claim “Fastest Browser in the world”.
Although I have installed many of the browsers in my PC, but most of the time, I use only two Chrome 4.1 and Firefox 3.6. My personal experience with Chrome been excellent and I rarely find myself using something.When I got to see the claim, then it was obvious to see myself that what’s going on actually.
The google search led me to two posts:
- Google’s official post about why chrome is faster
- Opera’s Official post announcing it as fastest
Used Opera for a while and sure not only speed but the other features also impressed me a lot. Specially, the desktop widgets. Now, I can keep a twiiter widget opened separate from browser like many of us used to do with our smartphone. Thanks for bringing the same widget experience here. Many things are new here with the same glassy finished looks.
Collected some facts to recall, I thought to put thoughts in a short and leave rest for yourself.
What a browser does now days?
Its not a job of rendering HTML pages only now days. In simplest words, it involves execution of complex scripts (Java Scripts, VB Scripts), CSS and many other things, when you get a page opened. Not only that counts in a faster experience, but also things like Cold Start (starting for the first time), Warm start (reopening after closing it), multiple tabs and RAM usages matters a lot.
So, you can understand that calling a browser faster than others can’t be something all the way. So many parameters to look for and so many scenarios needs to be consider. What may appear best to one, might not be the case with others.
How browsers are improving themselves now days?
Introduction of webkits, HTML5, increased use of CSS and Java Scripts really have made web experience more complex than ever and thanks God that browsers are responding to the same with the same pace. In recent past, we seen all of the browsers going for complete overhauling of their rendering engines for Java Script and other things. I am not sure, but first one was Firefox, then Opera, then constantly improving Chrome and then the latest one is opera again. Opera says “With Opera Presto 2.5, Carakan and Vega, get the fastest and most advanced browsing technologies”.
How to check the claims ourselves?
I might have some other views, some other preferences and habits and so are yours. Milliseconds might not be enough to notice or for unsettling someone’s belief, so better to take the technical ways. There are a number of popular tests out there online to test out rendering capabilities.
Easy tests are:
Easy because no need of setup, just run the test and get the results in the end. Do the same for browsers one by one and know, which one performs better. Try them and note the results yourself and get back to me. Let’s see what you find out.
Google Buzz
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gain as per my trend of being late into things, I am here to offer, what I think would be a comparison comment over the dark horse Google Buzz and well adored one Twitter. Google Buzz has really amazed many of us and seems to be filling the gap, Google tried to fit on many times, but failed. A service that didn’t created a stir like Google wave did for many months, but as of now, it really seems that Google finally got something, which it was lacking since long. “
Google Buzz:
Launched by Google on 9th February 2010, in many ways, is the boldest attempt from Google to get hold on Social Networking without compromising its ways of making things. Orkut and OpenSocial were already there and were effective due to their inherited simplicity, but still Google lacked that bigger media presence and fanatics, Facebook or Twitter has. We were encountering lots of Facebook and TweetThis button on blogs, but still from Google side, we had only few options like to add the feed to Google reader or the recent one a bookmark to share something on Orkut. Does that work?
Buzz is a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends. You can “like” these items and you can comment on them. And if you use Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, or Twitter, you can also automatically have those items imported into your stream. And Buzz will recommend items you might like based on your friends’ activity. Much like Friendfeed (launched by Google earlier) na !!!! But its integration with Gmail has made it the biggest phenomenon happening around as it started with an already existing massive base of Gmail users (150 million or 15 Carore as per August 2009).
Twitter: Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. It is sometimes described as "SMS of the Internet" The use of Twitter’s application programming interface for sending and receiving text messages by other applications often eclipses direct use of Twitter. It has almost every biggest celebrity already on it and if we talk about numbers, then it has total 5.36 Carore users as of now (note that these are number for the ones with public profiles only)
Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Ever since late 2009, users can follow lists of authors instead of following individual authors. All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications.
First of all, why social networking sites becoming so relevant?
Although I might be miserable while understanding the trend, as far I think the biggest reason behind success is, it unites people with
similar lifestyles (or wanna be similar) together in the “university lifestyle”, someone can connect with a friend, view his/her pictures and there is a good chance that he/she will see their new friend the next day on campus or at the pub. Many times these sites are not actually about the persons themselves, but about the things happening. You could get to know insides about a lifestyle, you always dreamed of, without even knowing the person having the same. Its not just about fun and time killing, but about feeling alive and talking to people in real than going to office and coming back from office in a routine, where we don’t even know our neighbors
In the similar way, it’s a medium where at least you could approach or get approached by people, you never seen or cant even think about meeting like someone layman like me wanna to give a message to SRK. Definitely, Social Sites have a reason to get popular.
How Twitter became such a big thing everyone is talking about?
Earlier experts denied growth of Social Networking sites and later suspicious about Twitter, but it was all about simplicity. Facebook, MySpace, Orkut etc. create an almost living life online with an introduction, photos, conversations, friend circle and communities. But while in start, there is hassle of filling forms and thinking that what to tell the world about you, later on, in stressed life, it becomes a bigger and boring thing than you actually wanted.
Think, if you are feeling something very ordinary, special or just weird and wanted to tell everyone about, what you do? Mailing are old fashioned for these kind of things and if you are regularly sending such messages then likely to be missed. So what are the other options? Before twitter, there were basically four ways to do the same:
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Send SMS to all your contacts (Its costly and embarrassing, if no one cares)
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Change your Orkut/ Facebook/ MySpace status message (was a better and still relevant option as you wished to address friends)
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Write a blog post (if you are not popular then nobody would even know about that)
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Change your status in chats (Gtalk, Yahoo, MSN etc)
Twitter become just a solution from combination for all these things. It was kind of Internet SMS considering the limitation of words to express. It was not FaceBook or Orkut kind of .. it was not blogging, but was both of these thing for people having short time specially like celebrities. Moreover, concept of following someone on twitter was way different than accepting friend requests. Yes! now you were not able to distinguish between friends that whom to show photos and whom to not, but still it was solving purpose for many.
As suited and joined by Celebrities actively, it was bound to attract others due to its simplicity and once twitter clients arrived allowing you to tweet from cell over GPRS, it became a BANG.
Why am I excited about Buzz?
Seriously speaking, I been a fan boy for Google Services, due to their integration into each other and top of that simplicity in way only they 
could have defined. Some of their product might not have gone for that much success, which they are used to, but the concept behind each of their product was never the bad one or threatening to other existing models. If you launch something exactly similar to others and advertise it so big that its the better then you are threatening, but if you made something, which actually raises standards and in place of putting points on board, then what you do look like you are doing for mass, for betterment of technology and living. This is what I feel about the way Google does things.
Still I will be critical about analyzing Buzz. Buzz is still as for me, is the kind of thing Orkut has in form of Friend Updates or kind of thing Facebook has (already they did a little over or it and Farmville, Mafia Wars like games had completely spoiled the meaning of it).
As I come to read few deeper articles about it, I find clear and bigger differences.
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Google Buzz |
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My Comment |
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Its about conversations. Someone buzz about something and other might wanna comment on the same. It creates a conversation. |
Its kind of self centric, where you write your opinion or give voices to others opinion. Not necessarily, you reply to someone specifically, but write your own words for public. Its not like one-to-one conversations, but might be like conversation in some group discussion or kind of board meeting. |
Both are special at their places. Twitter still relevant as its user base already self centric in the way twitter defines it. Chain of conversations are best thing that could happen to any blog/ micro-blog/ social networking and Google Buzz is headed in the same way, original Social Networking was all about, but still I doubt that how it will look like on a massive scale. |
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From the first hour it arrived, it started growing than any other could have, due to already established massive base of kind of most favourite email service Gmail. |
It was new in its concept and since its arrival in 2006, it grwon on its own due to its uniqueness easiness and yet effectiveness. |
Numbers and growth rate might say something else, but still Twitter is a steady thing. Buzz looks promising and good thing till we keep it out of context with twitter, but when will come on same scale, then they are going to carry two different definitions. |
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Its still inside your Gmail inbox, no separate site or link (though Google Profile is a richer version of personal pages now). Although it has been integrated into Google Maps for mobile, but still mobile client needs to be developed. Moreover, I don’t know if its possible to buzz from SMS. |
Its a separate service, separate account, separate password to remember, separate website to login into. Still it has massive reach due to mobile clients developed for it. More of it, it’s available by SMS (charges apply). |
Google Buzz has potential and Google is responding well to complaints to shape it better, hope people around world will raise all the points in tme. Sure, soon we will see clients developed and some way around SMS as Google SMS already available in some of the countries. Still I don’t think Google will step in something costing to users other than data usages. Its a wait and watch. |
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Like Wave, Buzz has many richer multimedia options starting from pics, videos to maps and docs. Thanks to integration of Google Services under one account name. There seems to be no limit over number of words in a message. |
Twitter work over links and text. Although I have seen things about pics and videos but all from other sites. Maintaining too much content on different places is a hassle. There is a limit over the number of words entered in a tweet |
Multimedia may make things complex and twitter succeeded on simplicity. Options are plenty, but it will be needed to be observed that how all things take shape on broader scale. Limit on number of words, keep it light weighted and straight without making confusions, while sometimes, one feel constrained due to limit, differnt perspectives. |
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Success of buzz lying in the way its bringing users buzzing while they don’t even know that they are buzzing. Whole new generation, who avoided twitter thinking that why to hit upon another piece of web, when already into many. It will bring simplicity to many users as Gmail is already the one site they open on first. |
Strength of Twitter is in the fact that it stands on its own without any huge thing backing it up, but the same might be weakness as well. For many things, it depends on others and its services has been down this many times that we see some sites like http://istwitterdown.com/ to check the status. |
Definitely, the power of Google cant be ignored, neither could the fear among communities, who suspects that are we going to get another Microsoft? Still Google sure has the potential of handling much more heavier traffic successfully than Twitter could ever did. On the other side, Buzz has taken it from other end, it has to be seen that how people respond to it. |
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Many started talking about privacy violation once it was launched, Google tried to handle things quickly, but sure it highlighted that keeping everything on place could be potentially dangerous. Yes! I have to mention that there is option to opt out Buzz anytime. |
Twitter has been a separate thing for everyone. You get an account in name as you want. Its integrated with services like LinkedIn on user’s choice, but still its separated from other services, which keeps it away from being a single point of failure. |
Both the sides are right in their sense, but if we foresee the future, then Google is clearly working out everything with keeping the model of future’s cloud computing model in the mind. Yes!! Single account meant to be single point of failure and so more secured services and aware users are required, but same is for Cloud Computing, which is a must in next days. |
Google must learn or might have already learned that this is not the good things and good technology that make things work for mass, but its lies in usability, reach and yet flexibility for everyone’s need. Many live in present only.
Lots to say, much could be said about … but what makes me excited about Buzz is that it made some of the people go live, who were still holding themselves from opening up. Yes!!! some may cry for privacy, but many of us out here want an open world and still if you want to be private then there are always options. Moreover, except the misfire of email exposing problem in start, Buzz is bringing only public contents, which will lessen the efforts of publicizing something.
At the end, I wish to add whatever the response of others might be, I already started enjoying Buzz and pretty sure that its gonna to stay for long (As Wave, Friendfeed and OpenSocial doesn’t seem to be).
Have you got something to say about your favourite teacher?
“ Just while crossing the street, you got to see a face, you think you would have seen somewhere and then all of sudden, he/ she shouts from the other side that “Oye!!! why staring like stupid? its me… your classmate… how could have forgotten me”. While having cup of coffee with the same lost friend, you dive into memories of college and rant about Professors, seniors and girls there. ”
Still the most discussed topics when meet some old friend remains about professors and batch-mates (girls section get cut off after marriage 
) Similar might have happened with everyone of us, but it happens once in a while as just after studies even the best buddies get scattered at much distances and soon in stressed life lost the touch with friends. We join the social sites to get connected and talk about old days.
While you have Orkut and Facebook communities with you, have you ever thought that if there was such a place, where 
you were able to know what others are thinking and talking about your teachers, like what one felt for him, who was favourite for the most of students and similar things like reviewing your teachers and rating them on your scale. I am not sure many of them would have thought about the same, if would have, then there is a famous international site named www.rateyourprofessor.com, which has been a grand success with billions of reviews. I checked the same, but felt that its not meant to Indian Continent and then I came across the kind of site I was looking for with the same motives and with really fast and effective interface, which is www.myfaveteacher.com. You may find an article over it from Hindustan Times here.
It was founded by an engineer Rajat Agarwal in September 2009 and in a short span have grown to have a lot of reviews. MyFaveTeacher is India’s largest compilation of college professor and teacher ratings and reviews. Here, students from various colleges and universities of India gather and present their views about their teachers and professors in the form of ratings and reviews. Students can rate any teacher on a scale of 1-5 on the basis of various criteria, viz. subject clarity, helpfulness, easiness. They can also write comments on the quality of education being imparted to them via reviews.
I find the concept really exciting and effective enough ….. more are its implications and applications.
- Not only rants for ex-students, but in totality, it could become a great resource for new students joining the Institutions. They will know the teachers better now before even meeting them.
- It forms a dynamic critical scale about Teahcers/ Professors themselves. They could find their weaknesses from there and reevaluate their ways time to time. For already good ones, it would add a testimony in their profiles as well.
- Even for prospective employers and management, it become a great resource to know about, what is being said about whom.
This all depends on reviews from students themselves and usability of site itself. In this side, this site really wins the heart. I find this site extremely smooth for surprise, otherwise I expected it to be complex enough like filling long forms, but it was this much easy that for posting and rating a teacher, you wont even needed to register on the same site and could post the review as anonyms. Really a great work in deed. I even found a section for my own Engineering College J. K. Institute there, although there was no existing review there, but I added one over my favourite Prof. R. R. Tiwari. Check the review here and if possible post one from your side, although I know that its hard to make people writing, but still I hope …
Internet Explorer 6: End of An Era
So, here comes the end of an era …
I was already wondering that how some of the old things we grown up with (even after introduction of many new alternatives) just don’t die. Like Windows XP! do we really had found any real alternative for the same, when the date of support expiration is already near? Now its turn of IE6 to go officially. Thanks for the pics Devilsworkshop
Google just announced that some of features in Google Docs and many other Google Sites and Services wont be available 
over Internet Explorer 6 and it made a big buzz across the blogs that Google made the final push to let this browser die, which still was holding more market share than chrome, IE7 or IE8, around 21% till the last December 2009.
Sure the link goes to the recent hacking incident, which was officially done with exploiting flaws in IE6, for which Microsoft later on released security fixes as well. Still many security experts and companies taken stand against Internet Explorer 6. German Government even issued advice to all of its citizens for not using any version of Internet Explorer including even the recent one Internet Explorer 8.
Is it really so that only that hacking incident made IE6 pushed away? I don’t think so. Introduction of HTML5 has already pushed IE6 to become obsolete as Internet Explorer till its version 7 didn’t supported HTML5 and like Google sites, many of leading sites have already moved over HTML5 due to availability of wide range of more options. Like Google Gears, many of the services already started mentioning that you can’t use them from IE6. Its just this, Google Docs have became of huge importance in world of cloud computing and by ruling out IE6 shares in it, Google has made it somewhat helpless by now (very few can keep and actively use multiple web browsers).
Internet Explorer 6 was released on August 27, 2001, a few months before Windows XP. This version included DHTML enhancements, content restricted inline frames, and partial support of CSS level 1, DOM level 1 and SMIL 2.0. The MSXML engine was also updated to version 3.0. Other new features included a new version of the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK), Media bar, Windows Messenger integration, fault collection, automatic image resizing, P3P, and a new look-and-feel that was in line with the Luna visual style of Windows XP, when used in Windows XP. Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1 offered several security enhancements and coincided with XP SP1 patch release. In 2002, the Gopher protocol was disabled and support for it was dropped in Internet Explorer 7. Internet Explorer 6.0 SV1 came out August 6, 2004 for Windows XP SP2 and offered various security enhancements and new color buttons on the user interface. IE6 updated the original ‘blue e’ logo to a lighter blue and more 3D look.
The biggest reason behind the success of Internet Explorer 6, it was shipped with kind of most successful operating system till now, so if the OS was a hit, so was the perfectly working browser Internet Explorer 6. Later as tabbed browsing became more successful and people started shifting to firefox more, Microsoft pushed Internet Explorer 7 with their Windows Vista, but many experienced it slower than even IE6 and was not that well received. Microsoft still hoping the best to get its shares back with a much better Internet Explorer 8.
I expect more services to come forward to drop support with Internet Explorer 6 in next few days as few already done the same from behind silently. As I read in Devilsworkshop.org as well, is Gmail going to drop support for IE6 in next?
Nitish Kumar
Watch and Show Hindi Movies online
Many people might be searching for such titles, whenever some movie get released. Sometimes due to poor cam quality of CDs / DVDs that hit to market in early rounds or just for free access of movies. Its been illegal since long, but was an already established trend to download movies online, which seems to be much difficult to stop or keeping track of. It seems that finally movie business started to respond in creative ways.
First I got to hear some weeks back that 3 Idiots will come online on YouTube after 12 weeks of release as announced by the director itself and today when I was just checking my subscriptions, then came across an article from Digital Inspiration that says about the collection of Hindi movies already online. Fun is that these are legal to be distributed like normal YouTube links. I am not sure about Revenue Sharing Program of YouTube, but many big banners like Shemaroo Entertainment, Rajshri, Sony Pictures, CBS, MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment, Starz and UltraHindi already seems to join the same.
This might be good way to get profit from dead market big movies of past. Whatever, but its a too good news for movie lovers, they could get hold on their favourites, whenever and wherever they want… not to mention.. all the movies are available in high quality. 
Although till now, only a handful of movies there, hoping that soon more will be added and also some quality content from English Movie stock.
For Popular Hindi Movies Collection, check out the link
For All Movies Collection including English and others, check out the link
Giving you some of the best movies online in full here, Enjoy
Squid Proxy Server: Step by Step Dummies Manual
As promised to myself, I have updated Squid Proxy Server Implementation Manual with use cases and recommendations. Also, the related two articles has been removed and merged into the single link for avoiding ambiguity.
This also involves basic firewall and normal issues/ requirements like Outlook etc. I hope, it would be helpful for many people out there. Post your opinions and suggestions for sure.
Nitish Kumar
Google Vs China, Strategy or Real Concerns?
It seems that like the last year went, Google still keeping itself well in news.
| Got to read one tweet @ claymill “The Google /China incident feels ominously profound; it’s an ending and a beginning but nobody knows exactly what ended or began.” |
Google; A name always found in support of Open Internet and even recently made a precise statement over definition of Open and has a philosophy that believe that “open systems win”. They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for businesses. 
China; A nation, who leads in methods of censorship. Internet censorship in China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. In accordance with these laws, more than sixty Internet regulations have been made by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government, and censorship systems are vigorously implemented by provincial branches of state-owned ISPs, business companies, and organizations.
Internet Censorship and Google: The History
For the first time, Google found to have started to censor its search results in 2002 in compliance with United States’ DMCA legislation. Although even in that time, this move was taken in innovative ways as banned results were replaced by corresponding DMCA complaint. Later on the similar phenomenon was noticed with other countries like United Kingdom (Since September 2006), Germany & France (Since October 2002) and most importantly with China (Since December 2005) in adherence with their corresponding country policies.
With China, Google’s journey been with troubles since the beginning due to huge difference in philosophy. In fact, there was a time when popular search engines such as Altavista, Yahoo!, and Google were completely banned from use in China, although later the ban was lifted, but filtering remained continued.
Google officially announced its adherence with China’s policy in January 2006 and launched a Chinese-language service that will be stripped of content deemed offensive or subversive. Google somehow managed to devise an interesting solution (must read link) for this technically big problem. Later on other Internet giants including Yahoo and Microsoft’s MSN have also censored material "in exchange" for being allowed to tap a market comprising 110 million Internet users, the world’s second-largest market.
An Example of Censorship could be cited as below:
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch strongly condemned Google’s compliance with China’s Golden Shield Project, calling it a form of self-censorship. According to Amnesty,
“ These forms of censorships seem to contradict the very principles that Google — whose unofficial motto is "don’t be evil" — was founded upon. Until January 2006, Google’s Support Center claimed that it "does not censor results for any search term", but removed this claim after reaching its deal with China. ”
By 12th January 2010, Google finally decided to stand against China’s Censorship
The sensational news was uncovered by Google itself by their blog post on 12th January 2010, in which they wrote that they faced a sophisticated attack in mid Dec 2009, where the hackers targeted Google’s corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. Google claimed that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
Google said
We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that "we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."
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. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
After attacks over RockYou and Twitter, this was a news which would have caused a stir among people for security concerns of cloud with headlines like “Now even Google got compromised”, like one tweet @vicsingh said “google has balls for potential china pullout, but the positive externality is that no one is talking about the vulnerability of their cloud”, but the matter went much more twisted and interesting as Google shared this information with the world saying …
“We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech.”
More interesting were their next two decisions;
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One was a somewhat not that noticed move by Google after around 6 hours of their blog post about attacks, where they made their Gmail and other services using https access by default.
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The other one came with the same blog post itself saying “We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn”
Why Google suddenly became ready to even leave China?
As per information revealed by Google itself, the attack was mere phishing attacks “These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.”
Now, the million dollars question to be asked is, such attacks been common to whole community of internet users and all leading companies since decades and Google itself said (if true) that only two of the accounts were compromised up to an extent (not even completely) then what became the reason of this huge decision, which could impact many things all around the globe in many ways?
Its true that for years, Google faced withering criticism for what activists and lawmakers said was a willingness to abandon social responsibility in return for greater wealth. Its true that Google co-founder Sergey Brin shared many of the critics’ concerns about Google’s presence in China (but he publicly maintained that even a censored version of the company’s search engine was better than none at all). Its also true that recent move invited world wide praises for Google.
But still it will be a question to ask that why now after four years? Is the biggest market (around 20% of whole world) became less lucrative suddenly for which many compromises were made? Is performance troubles due to excessive filtering seems to nail down Google’s cloud strategies?
Note that even now Google is filtering its search results and its operation in China is under a review as per Google itself, not opted out. Google officials said that they will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which they could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. So, wait and watch.
This link sites Testimony of Google Inc. about China from their blog post in 2006. Have a read. I would also like to invite you all to comment upon what you think about this news.
