14 DAY TRIAL // Google's announcement that it may close down operations in China if it can't start running an uncensored search engine in the country has had reverberations in all sorts of places and provoked responses from other companies and officials alike. One company that spoke out on the matter was Yahoo and its statement was seen as supportive of Google's stance. While the merits of the statement can be discussed, Yahoo was very careful in its wording, controversial it was not. Yet, even this subdued stance was enough to raise a response from the Alibaba Group, Yahoo's partner in China, criticizing the company for being "reckless" by rallying with Google.
So what exactly was it that Yahoo said that was so controversial? Very, very little in fact. “We condemn any attempts to infiltrate company networks to obtain user information. We stand aligned with Google that these kinds of attacks are deeply disturbing and strongly believe that the violation of user privacy is something that we as Internet pioneers must all oppose,” Yahoo said in the statement.
What Yahoo is saying is that it believes that user privacy is very important and that attacks on any company's infrastructure designed to retrieve user data should be condemned. It doesn't admit that it too was targeted in the wide attack that Google says it was the last straw that pushed it to make its ultimatum, though several reports claim that it is highly likely that Yahoo Mail was attacked as well. Yahoo doesn't make any reference to China and doesn't make any claims about Google's new stance on censorship.
Yet, this careful statement was still enough to make the Alibaba Group come out with its own statement to say that not only the company doesn't agree with Yahoo, but it believes that it went too far in its assumptions. “Alibaba Group has communicated to Yahoo! that Yahoo’s statement that it is ‘aligned’ with the position Google took last week was reckless given the lack of facts in evidence. Alibaba doesn’t share this view, ” the Chinese company said.
It's very hard to see what part of Yahoo's, rather cowardly, statement, can be interpreted as reckless. Furthermore, it's also unclear what part would need any sort of evidence to support it, the only thing that Yahoo actually said is that user privacy is important. What company can argue with that, or needs evidence to support it? A Chinese company, obviously.
Yahoo pulled out of China a few years ago, forfeiting all of its operations in the country, but getting a 40 percent stake in the Alibaba Group which runs some of the country's biggest e-commerce and online retail sites. However, the two companies haven't seen eye to eye in quite a while now and Alibaba is most likely using this instance as a chance to take another stab at Yahoo while also scoring a few points with the Communist ruling party, always a smart move when doing business in China.