China Malware War Gets Personal 35
bcaulfield writes to tell us Zhou Hongyi has filed a 3.6 million yuan ($450,000) defamation suit against Yahoo China. Hongyi, the former president of Yahoo China, filed his suit in response to comments made in a recent Yahoo press conference accusing him of unethical business practices. From the article: "A rift between Mr. Zhou and Yahoo China has been developing since before his departure from Yahoo last year, just prior to Alibaba's takeover of Yahoo's China operations. Mr. Zhou doled out generous bonuses to Yahoo employees in a ploy his detractors derided as a naked purchase of loyalties. Mr. Zhou defended the disbursements. 'Many of these people were longtime Yahoo employees, and they were under no obligation to follow me,' he said. 'It was my money to do with as I wanted.'" Update 08/20/2006 15:01 GMT by SM: Corrected the currency for the suit.
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$450,000 suit, not $3.6m (Score:5, Informative)
Re:$450,000 suit, not $3.6m (Score:4, Funny)
Is China's People's Court anything like our People's Court? That would be so awesome...
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I'm Dong Rourrerryn thanking you once again for us and reminding you, if you're involved in a dispute with another party (such as this) and you can't work it out, don't take the raw into your own hands. You take him to court.
(i'm sorry, I know bad humor).
While yahoo is an information technology... (Score:2, Insightful)
New tag time (Score:4, Insightful)
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malware? (Score:5, Interesting)
"There's only one browser address bar, and we were all competing for that space," he said. "We all tried to uninstall one another. And we all just went further and further down that road. If you can protect your software from being uninstalled by a competitor's, then imagine how hard it is for a regular user to uninstall."
Re:malware? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite. The most one can conclude is that every toolbar writer had an incentive to make his toolbar malware. Some, presumably, resisted the temptation. This guy did not. And his argument ( 'everybody else was doing it' ) was something that most of us learned was an insuficient excuse back in kindergarten.
Re:malware? (Score:4, Funny)
And so I quit school.
KFG
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Re:malware? (Score:5, Insightful)
I may be wrong, but doesn't Firefox get a kickback for sending people to Google? If they do, that doesn't seem all that ethically different from Google's own toolbar, malware-wise. If not, I apologize for the misinformation.
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I think the OP's point is that Zhou is claiming (for what that's worth) that no one resisted the temptation.
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Damn them all! (Score:5, Funny)
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They discovered the password to get past the Great Firewall was "Open Sesame"
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Sorry, had to do it.
this is ironic (Score:4, Informative)
Zhou Hongyi was often titled "The father of Chinese malware" ......
The 3721 assistant plugin he created is totally a nightmare, especially in a workgroup environment. I think the only motivation of this lawsuit is about money.
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money is everything in China these days, you can be sure this is about money. Plus I'm perfectly sure he bought those loyalties, because that's totally normal amongst Chinese people in every position. It's totally normal in China to bribe people around you to convince them to do something in your favour - I know several lower gov't official and judges who fund their lifestyle this way.
In China everything seems to be about 'face' and money.
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a naked purchase of loyalties? (Score:1)
Remember "Alibaba"? (Score:3, Informative)
Alibaba's subsidiaries include Yahoo China, payment solution provider Alipay, and leading Chinese auction site Taobao.com."
(It was also the completely unserious site who allowed Apple Mac G6 (!) to be listed on their pages)
http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/11/mac-g6-now-ava
"Unfortunately (or fortunately, as the case may be), the Red PCs web site seems to be down, though the machine is still listed on the Alibaba.com site as available for purchase with free global shipping and a one-year warranty."
Standard business practice (Score:3, Informative)
Graft is standard business practice in China. Yahoo would be wise to consider a recent quote by Donald Rumsfeld [senate.gov]: "You've got to be kiddding! Do you think there is gambling in the casino?"