Akamai To Quit Its CDN in China (theregister.com) 22
An anonymous reader shares a report: Akamai has decided to end its content delivery network services in China, but not because it's finding it hard to do business in the Middle Kingdom. News of Akamai's decision to end CDN services in China emerged in a letter it recently published and sent to customers and partners that opens by reminding them the company has a "commitment to providing world-class delivery and security solutions" -- and must therefore inform them that "Effective June 30, 2026, all China CDN services will reach their decommission date."
Customers are offered a choice: do nothing and then be moved to an Akamai CDN located outside China, or use similar services from Chinese companies Tencent Cloud and Wangsu Science & Technology.
Customers are offered a choice: do nothing and then be moved to an Akamai CDN located outside China, or use similar services from Chinese companies Tencent Cloud and Wangsu Science & Technology.
What does this mean? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've read this several times and cannot reconcile this statement, at all.
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notice how we're all supposed to 'share' but the powerful never do, corrupt governments are by definition despotic
Re:What does this mean? (Score:5, Informative)
China wanted them to do something which wouldn't be consistent with that, like giving all their customer's secrets to the government. They had to leave, but they don't dare to offend the authorities in China by explaining what exactly happened.
Re:What does this mean? (Score:5, Interesting)
I read this as a sort of Canary Clause - I'm guessing they were "asked" to install a wiretap, and rather than compromise on their value, they decided to wind down operations. Taking the diplomatic road, they're not stating this explicitly, because you don't want to burn bridges on the way out.
Commendable, if anything.
Re:What does this mean? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the corporate speak for "government told us to do X, we are not willing to do X because it's way over the line for us, so we're exiting without Hurting the Feelings of Chinese People (euphemism used by CCP express that The Party is not pleased with foreigners' actions)".
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"The calls are coming from inside the house!"
They are saying that in order to provide both security and content delivery... they needed to get out of China. One of their business goals was not compatible with operating in China. So they are leaving.
They are careful not to make any accusations that could hurt their current or future business relationships. You are free to draw your own conclusions.
They really aren't even daring to say why. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the worst thing. Read the Register article and you see that any company operating in China basically ends up supporting and helping their competition. The rules in China force the companies to hand over their technical and business know-how to local Chinese partners who then sell it on. At the same time, when the Chinese competition comes abroad, we get situations like with TikTok where Trump and the US Supreme Court seem to be preparing to step in to rescue them from having to actually follow American rules.
Let's be clear, the Chinese aren't doing anything wrong here. America "stole" European Intellectual property when they needed it to develop. There is no obligation to respect other countries patent and trade secret laws. The people who are doing this wrong are the Western oligarchs and Western governments who collaborate with China in the hope of getting an advantage over their own people. We should be imprisoning Western business leaders who allow their own companies trade secrets to get to China.
Re:They really aren't even daring to say why. (Score:4, Informative)
Let's be clear, the Chinese aren't doing anything wrong here.
Yes they are - they agreed by treaty to respect those laws in exchange for investment. America largely did not have such agreements in place when we elected to not respect European IP.
Re:They really aren't even daring to say why. (Score:4, Insightful)
Enforcement in those treaties has always been the responsibility of the Western governments and companies. China reasonably openly breaches those terms. Investment continues. Investors do not get fined.CEOs who work with China knowing that their secrets will get stolen and they will be pushed out of their markets by Chinese competitors but they will get much bigger bonuses from cheap products in the meantime do not go to prison.
If Steve Jobs and Tim Cook was put in prison for having given Apple's production secrets to China. If Elon Musk was put into prison for handing over the Model 3 production secrets then I'd agree with you. As it is, it's 100% clear that the people with the right to complain about what China is doing aren't complaining because that's what they really wanted.
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What production secrets? Tim Cook's claim to fame was showing Jobs that Chinese companies could do it better and cheaper, i.e. that American manufacturing and logistics was already behind.
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> There is no obligation to respect other countries patent and trade secret laws
Legalistically?
If you're going there then there are treaties that have the effect of law.
Morally? If it's not immoral overseas than it wouldn't be immoral here. Unless the morality exists only at a clan/superclan level.
Ends justify the means?
OK, then there is no social agreement, just warring factions.
On net, it's probably the worst to see a man who owns a pencil and a notebook and if he writes certain things in that notebo
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Everyone cares about "intellectual property" when they think they're ahead. No-one cares about it when they think they're behind. The USA ignored European intellectual property laws to catch up. Hollywood ignored Edison's patents to catch up. It's the way things go.
South Korea and Japan are 9ms away (Score:5, Informative)
As an AWS, Google and akami customer, one can populate chinas outer edge and service 95% of the population as well as we do Tulsa from Chicago, DC, NY/NJ. 9ms while painful in real time trading, is nothing for 99.99999% of the use cases where video buffers behind other content otherwise. The content regulators in China are in a take it or leave it position, a very binary choice, and so far free trade and greed keeps China authorities out of foreign provided financial data.
I would be more concerned about getting CDN locked out of India or Central Africa, because there is not a service ring just beyond the wall.
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9ms while painful in real time trading
what use is a cdn for real time trading?
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I worked at a CDN (not Akamai) for many years, one that avoided having POPs in China for obvious reasons that I won't get into here.
You're forgetting the Great Firewall and the rather limited and sometimes saturated paths from China to the outside world (often Tokyo, sometimes Korea, sometimes elsewhere). Never mind whatever local conditions you might find on China's various telecoms before a packet ever leaves the country. There are very limited levers (if any) to influence traffic paths in/out of China.
Ov
18 months warning (Score:2)
It seems odd they are giving customers 10 months notice... If this were in response to some action by the Chinese Gov't I doubt the Gov't would give them 18 months to comply or shut down operations inside China.
I think (but it's just an opinion) that Akamai is choosing to wind-down operations inside China due to declining revenues/customers, and is just riding out the useful life of their hardware currently deployed inside China, that's based on the word 'decommissioned' in the note.
In reality I think the d
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If they were forced out they'd just transfer over the customers to servers outside China and let the chips fall as they may.
CCP wants the customers to be handed to CCP controlled competitors in an orderly manner.
So what (Score:2)