The story of Windows 10 Chinese Government Edition It is one of the craziest you can find. We all know that China is not very given to people’s privacy. In addition, the country restricts access to the internet, limiting the websites that people can access.
This is the Chinese version of Windows 10
It is well known how the great technological companies seek to obtain benefits even from stones. What gives more profit is the collection of user data, your search patterns that are tagged by gender, age, region, ethnicity, etc. And Microsoft is no exception.
Windows 10 implements a item named snoopware, which is nothing more than tracking software. You can see this in the system start menu news of Windows or in the weather function that integrates the operating system, which tells you if it’s raining, sunny or the temperature in your area.
Through this strategy, which is nothing far from that used by Google, Facebook, Amazon or others, They get user data that they then sell. Personal data, such as name, exact address or similar, are not collected, they are more general data, but, even so, attentive to privacy.
China has a major trade war with the United States, which is the origin of Microsoft. To prevent data leakage, the Chinese government launched an ordeal at Microsoft. basically, or guaranteed privacy and they did not collect any data or they lost that market. This meant losing its presence in government infrastructure and in companies owned by the government.
We are talking about losses of hundreds, if not billions of dollars and a brutal loss of value of the company. Faced with this threat, Microsoft agreed to remove their snoopware of Windows 10, but only for china. This is the origin of Windows 10 China Goverment Edition, Microsoft’s most private operating system.
Really, except for the elimination of this kind of “tracker”, there are no notable differences. The only thing is that he operating system is only in mandarinwhich is the most widely spoken language in China and another language cannot be installed. This serves as a firewall to prevent anyone from outside of China from using it.
Maybe the EU should learn something
Surely, you have read countless times that this or another technology company has received a fine. Microsoft or Google have suffered a few, which are rarely executed. Normally these sanctions take, in the first instance 4-5 years to come out, then they are appealed and the ball rolls. Thus, a decade or more can pass without the fine being effective.
The funny thing is that, while these sanctions are being discussed, they are given subsidies in another way. In the end, these fines, if they end up being executed, come out of the money in subsidies received. What’s more, if we did the sum of the sanction and the subsidies, it would come out that the company has earned more money than it has to pay.
China is not an example for many things, but the ordeal has worked great for them.
