China Approves Google Motorola Mobility Merger 78
symbolset writes "CNET is reporting that China has approved Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Previously approved by regulatory authorities in the U.S. and Europe, China was the last holdout. The deal will now reportedly close 'within days.'" I wonder what conditions Google may have faced from the regulators, and whether they include any exceptions to the "don't be evil" guideline.
Re:don't be evil (Score:5, Informative)
Submitter here. Google left China's search engine market because China wanted them to enforce censorship and disclose identifying information for posters - and that violated their "do no evil" motto. The CEO at the time, Eric Schmidt wanted to do it. Larry page wanted to do it. But Sergey Brin took a position something like (not a literal quote) "then you'll do it without me because I'm not going there. Dad was a Russian political dissident and I might have grown up in a Gulag and you all might not have met me but for his escape to freedom. I won't be involved in anything like depriving others of freedom of speech." I imagine there were several incidences of the phrase "fuck you" involved too, but that might just be my imagination.
The hacking thing was a secondary issue, but might have been reason enough in its own right. Regardless, Google faced the threat and didn't cross the rubicon. They didn't cave. That should have submarined this Motorola Mobility deal, but it didn't. Google serves the China search market from Taiwan now, where these requirements don't apply - but the Great Firewall blocks some Chinese citizens from getting the best use of their Google, but at least Google isn't participating in it.
The fight over this is probably why Schmidt isn't the CEO any more. And that's OK. For babysitting Larry and Sergey for a few years he got $10 billion, which makes him the highest paid babysitter of all time.
That "I wonder" stuff was added by timothy, as is his right as an editor. The submission [slashdot.org] is the stuff in the blockquote.
The condition added by China's regulators is the same as other governments required: Android has to stay open - which Google intended anyway.
I'm actually pretty surprised that China approved this deal. I thought Google was going to have to take Motorola Mobility without their China operations - and that they would. Somewhere in China is a Google employee who earned a really large bonus. He made it rain.
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Re:don't be evil (Score:4, Insightful)
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Who paid it then, the tooth fairy?
Re:don't be evil (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are DeVry doing finance degrees now? (Score:2)
Tosh. The pie is a finite size. To make an extra slice you have to cut down somebody else's.
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Begone troll.
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the pie of people buying those stock options wasn't dependent on if he got the stock or if google sold them as a company, so google gave him a boatload of money.
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The China hold out was purely personal, as such all that was required was an individual arrangement. Google was stuck between a rock and a hardplace, either pay and be evil or be screwed by M$ being evil.
Re:don't be evil (Score:4, Funny)
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I think he's saying that bribery is more common in societies that have (or have recently had) forced income equality. While "communism" itself doesn't apply to the modern China, which is Communist only in name, the culture of bribery is still rife due to its history. As a comparison, we hear of underqualified legacies getting into Ivies in the US, but how often do we hear of parents giving money to elementary or middle school officials to secure a place for their children? It happens in China, and the diffe
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It's a shame China couldn't have demanded that Google force Motorola unlock their bootloaders worldwide as a condition of approval. My Photon is for sale on eBay right now because their 2.3.5 update *really* locked the bootloader once and for all, and made the phone impossible to root for at least a few days.
I refuse to be like Motorola's battered spouse any longer. I will not graciously thank them for giving me a thin, damp, moldy blanket to help keep warm when they make me sleep naked on the dungeon's col
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If China wants Google to ensure that Android stays open the best thing they could do would be to BUY ORACLE.
I'm sure that China could afford it, maybe have to call in some of the debt that the USA owes them...
Oracle is a different issue (Score:2)
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You're scum.
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It's imaginary pussy.
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Although I wouldn't make such a firm generalization regarding the quality of pussy.
Yep. There's good pussy all over the world. I speak from experience with ladies from China and India as well as African-Americans, a wide variety of Europeans, and one Polynesian. Never got to sample any Inuit or Native Americans (north or south) or Mongolians or Arab ladies.
Posting as AC, because my wife does not - and should not - know everything I did in my dissolute youth (before I met her and became staidly conventional).
If you were ever in Mongolia and DIDN'T sample Mongol pussy then you really didn't try. Or you were scared off by the Mongol guys.
Mongol guys don't like foreigners messing with Mongol girls because THEY KNOW HOW EASY THEY ARE!
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Ironically, one of the PRC vice premiers is Muslim; and no, they don't have a problem with it. Apparently, they don't care what you believe in so long as you consider yourself Chinese.
Yes, China Is Not Evil (Score:3, Insightful)
China is trying to join the present age gracefully without a painful civil war or excessive domestic violence. That's a difficult course, and I wish them all the luck in the world in that goal. I'm not a big fan of how they're managing the transition shock - they're certainly not doing it how I would do it. But I'm not looking at it from the party's point of view and they know their people better than I do. They have no successful historical guide for how this is done peacefully, because it's never been
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It's getting harder to see the difference between china and the rest of the world these days.
A recent documentary showed a company seeing if it could produce cushions in the UK competitively as compared to it's factory in China.
The British Machinists were faster and more productive than their chinese conterparts. Over the previous 5 years chinese wages had increased 500% to £1 an hour, yes 20pence an hour five years ago. The chinese workers worked longer hours slept in small company rooms away f
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China is trying to join the present age gracefully without a painful civil war or excessive domestic violence. That's a difficult course, and I wish them all the luck in the world in that goal. I'm not a big fan of how they're managing the transition shock - they're certainly not doing it how I would do it.
The way I see it, they've looked at how Russia fared in its own transition - which involved a much more rapid change-over to wild west capitalism and political freedoms - and figured that they don't want to pay that price [wikipedia.org].
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Is China in on this, too, now? (Score:5, Interesting)
It used to be you just had to get FTC approval for a merger.
Then the EU started to throw its weight around and got in on the act.
So now, China has to approve global mergers, too?
Is there a full list of approval authorities?
Do Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa (4 of the BRICS) also need to approve? All 200 or so countries of the world?
Or is it a game of chicken where if a podunk country says "You can't merge without our permission", a company will just say "Bye," but they can't say the same for huge markets?
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Only countries where the company is drawing like $1.5 billion+ in revenue. They sell a lot of stuff in China, behind only the US.
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It used to be you just had to get FTC approval for a merger.
Then the EU started to throw its weight around and got in on the act.
So now, China has to approve global mergers, too?
Is there a full list of approval authorities?
Do Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa (4 of the BRICS) also need to approve? All 200 or so countries of the world?
Or is it a game of chicken where if a podunk country says "You can't merge without our permission", a company will just say "Bye," but they can't say the same for huge markets?
Well, we live in a different world now. Companies are no longer U.S. centric and if Google-Motorola wants to sell their products in China then the merger will have to be approved by Chinese authorities. The same goes for Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa. That's the price you pay for globalism.
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If the two businesses merging have presence in the US and rely on US protection for their patents (as is the motivation for Google buying up Motorola), then I imagine yes. So, if Google and Motorola have a presence in China, and Google needs China's auspices to solidify its future patent war chest, then you bet they would do everything they can to get it. Also, tit-for-tat mentality is what leads to the shitfests like the entire Middle East. US and China are smarter than that.
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Is there a full list of approval authorities?
Do Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa (4 of the BRICS) also need to approve? All 200 or so countries of the world?
This is partly answered in the article. It says that the deal had to be approved by various regulators, and mentions Israel and Taiwan along with the US, EU and China. I'm sure there were others - China, Israel and Taiwan were mentioned in the article as they seemed to be the laggards in the approval process.
China just joined the EU/US club (Score:2)
This is nothing new.
Larger companies, like Coca-Cola, Intel, etc. still wrestle themselves into presence in the world.
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Larger companies, like Coca-Cola, Intel, etc. still wrestle themselves into presence in the world.
So do itty bitty ones. Not much of an observation unless you have something to add.
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Of course. Any country in which you do business can tell you what you can and cannot do as a business in their part of the world. And so it should be. Deal with it.
Google wanted to reap the tax benefits of opening subsidiaries in lots of countries. Those subsidiaries are subject to local laws, and antitrust therefore potentially needs to be approved everywhere. Nothing to see here.
The article was updated (Score:2, Insightful)
From the update to the article, it is stated that Google must keep android free and open for at least the next 5 years.
Not a bad condition if you ask me.
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keep? the google-apps/api's aren't free _now_..
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Hmmm, 5 years is really short. Makes you wonder if the government thinks its state companies will be able to get a competitive OS out in that time.
Lets hope they ban all IPhones and Nokias (Score:2, Insightful)
Then a complete deadlock of every smartphone. Then finally politicians who own these phones can reform the patent system and see how absurd it is! ... at least I can hope since MS is banning all HTC andriod phones from the US.
"don't be evil" (Score:2)
To whom?
No problem with "do no evil". (Score:1)
China never demanded Google to deviate from "do no evil." It only demanded that it uses China's definition of "evil".