TWIA Episode 13: The Google Showdown with China

Gen Kanai, Director of Asia Business Development from Mozilla Corporation joins the TWIA crew as the guest to discuss the Google Showdown with the China government on unfiltered search & censorship and examine the implications of foreign companies entering into the Chinese market. The TWIA crew and Gen Kanai continue to discuss the recent Yahoo! Friendster partnership in Southeast Asia and an exciting discussion about the security of mobile banking in Korea and how that ties up with browsers, search engines and security protocols in East Asia.

Show Notes on This Week in Asia:

• Samsung Developer Event in Zouk, Singapore: A short account on the event as Daniel and BL attended the event, and also there is an announcement on a competition or hackathon for development in March (We will put up more details once Samsung sends us the information).
• The Google Showdown with China: The press statement from Google on their decision to stop censorship on their search results and taking on the Chinese government to the extent that they might have to shut down their offices in China, sends out major ripples to the whole of Asia. We hear different views (George Godula – who is coming as a guest on our show in the coming week, BL and Tangos Chan) on the issue and the official response from the Chinese government (Source: BBC News).
• Yahoo! Southeast Asia and Friendster Partnership: The crew examine the impact of the Yahoo! Southeast Asia and Friendster partnership.
• Korea Authorities Slammed for ‘Myopic’ Approach to Wireless Banking Security: Gen Kanai and the TWIA crew discuss the adoption of the SEED protocol (a block cipher developed by the Korean Information Security Agency) and the consequence of monoculture in the Korean Internet space that does not support mobile banking on iPhones or in any browser other than Internet Explorer.
• East Asia Internet as a whole: The crew and Gen Kanai discuss about the trends and observations about the web-tech in East Asia and surprisingly, Google is not dominant in the East Asia markets. Additional References: Japan Mobile Social Networking Statistics
• The Future of Technology is: BL narrates the HP event “The Future Is” and talks about the “Blog a Trend” competition open for Singaporeans.

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