For a while I have been watching Google (GOOG) and Baidu (BIDU) stocks, mostly out of curiosity. I've wondered if Google might be a good buy, and, in a very round about way, I know of some of the initial investors in Baidu.
Yesterday, Google announced very sophisticated and intentional hacks into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights advocates, as well as additional online attacks. The attacks seem to originate from China and have the appearance of being perpetrated by the government there. In response, Google stopped censoring its searches on Google.cn and threatened to completely stop operations in China. The result was an immediate after-hours drop in Google's share price (though only a small portion of its revenue comes from China) and a huge spike in Baidu's share price. The shares continue in their respective directions today.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but it is really troubling when a company attempts to do something right for humanity and that action translates into bad business. We should rethink business priorities. (And some people are - I like Umair Haque, for example.)



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