Microsoft Will Stay in China
Microsoft is not going to follow Google’s lead in pulling out of China. “We’ve been quite clear that we’re going to operate in China,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in an interview on CNBC. However, his hopes for China to produce growing revenue for the company seem to hinge on a thorny issue: a reduction of piracy and intellectual-property theft. His reference to the problem of IP theft points to bigger challenges Microsoft could face if it decided to leave China. Microsoft has been battling software piracy there for years, and pulling out of the country could amount to it giving up the battle and allowing piracy of its products to flourish unchecked. The issue of censorship or human rights has not been raised in this interview, in contradiction with Google, who considers them as central issues to its new approach to the country.