Mozilla in Asia

Some interesting tidbits in this article (ICP license, localization freedom, quotes from Lee) but note the byline- “intern researcher.”  I’d not quote this one verbatim.

Google.cn Shifts to Win from Survival Mode

Peter Junge has a post on the OSS World Summit 2007 in Guangzhou for ZDNet Asia’s Open Source blog.  This post was merely listing who spoke and what they spoke on.  I hope Junge has some interesting opinions about the event for his next post.

Amy Jiangsu, who is promoting Ubuntu in China, has some thoughts on open source software in China that I found to be pretty interesting.

Question: With software piracy rates in China so high and proprietary software being almost free as in beer, do FOSS advocates like yourself have to work harder to persuade users to try Linux than advocates in other countries?

Answer: I don’t like to use the word persuade. It’s true that there is almost no economic incentive for users to opt Linux over Windows on their PCs in China, but let’s face the fact that this option has rarely been an economical decision. Even in developed countries, where people has to pay for proprietary software as enforced by copyright law, how many Linux users have chosen Linux merely because it’s free as in beer ?

Swimming Upstream – Open Source in China

Gang Lu of Mobinode reports that Tencent has launched a Firefox plugin for their QQ service.  This is important because QQ is probably the most widely used consumer Internet service in China.

I can’t find the World Bank report mentioned in this report, but it is a significant concern when Internet access in China costs as much as it does.

Guangming Daily reports Chinese netizens spend ten times more money on the internet than people in developed countries.A World Bank report released on Monday reports Chinese netizens spend an average of 83.5 yuan (US$10.8) on the internet every month, more than 10 percent of their monthly income.

People in developed countries spend an average of less than one percent of their income to access the same information online.

It is amazing to think about spending 10% of one’s monthly income on Internet access.

Internet too expensive for most Chinese

Alfred Peng of Sun China gave a presentation to the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences last Friday which included a number of topics on open source including Mozilla Firefox, Sun’s valuable work in China on behalf of Firefox and Thunderbird, application testing and other topics. Photos from the event are on Joey Guo’s blog. Thank you to Alfred, Emily, Dave, Simon, Joey and all of the Sun China folks who have supported Mozilla in China.

Michael Iannini of ZDnet Asia’s Open Source blog is very realistic about the hurdles that open source software faces in China. He believes that there are still many misconceptions and misunderstandings around open source in China.
That said, it is pretty interesting to see a supporter of open source software protest at a speech by Bill Gates at Peking University in Beijing. Ya, I Yee has photos of the protester in action.

Interesting…

What would a Google investment in Maxthon mean to Microsoft?

Google Eyeing Maxthon – Will Stoke Flames of Jealousy in Firefox

Google Takes Partial Ownership Of Maxthon Browser

Google Pinyin IME. Impressive.

This is interesting for a number of reasons (obvious stuff like using the IME to take mindshare away from the IME built into Windows, and promote their toolbar, plus the fact that Google has a large number of experts on language on staff), but mainly it’s interesting because in 2007, I don’t think anyone is innovating in the IME space (aside from Google.) Redmond has been consumed by the Vista launch and has no time to update their IMEs.

The IME market is critical to so many double-byte markets and it’s a perfect vector for Google: their database of the Internet allows them to update their IME automatically all the time (vs. traditional software IMEs which get updated not often enough)

Shanghaist loves the new IME:

How’s that different from old school Windows pinyin you ask? Well, for starters, GP is hell of a lot smarter. Take this sentence for example, “上海到处都是盗版碟片.” Before GP came along, we would have had to break it down to several phrases and complete the line that way. Not with GP, we didn’t have to pause one bit. And the goodness doesn’t stop there. If an user simultaneously logs into his Google account while typing, GP will analyze and learn his word entry habit, and overtime optimize character output to save user time. How cool is that?

Shanghaiist: Google Pinyin: Typing in Chinese has never been this much fun

I’d love to see a Japanese IME from Google.

Aydin Senkut has a very good review of the search market in China on R/RW. I don’t have too much more to add to his observations other than some long-range opinions. I think the only thing that Senkut didn’t mention which he should have are the P/E ratios of the various companies which may help explain corporate strategies to a certain extent.