Wanna get attention of a public company?

Ms. MacKinnon's site implies that Yahoo and Google help support Chinese censorship, while ignoring the fact the Microsoft supports censorship as well.

All three have traded off moral and ethical standards off for the right to compete for profits in China.

How many Chinese have to go to prison before that becomes a moral issue for these three companies?

A billion? A million? A hundred? A dozen? One?

"While there is a soul in prison, I am not free" --Eugene Debs

Mike: have you talked with any of the people working over in China or on Chinese issues? I have. On a variety of sides. It's a moral issue for everyone involved. They have to make decisions every day about how things will be done. Their decisions get picked apart here on blogs, in the press, in front of congress, by coworkers and neighbors and more. These are decisions that have REAL consequences of real lives and billions of dollars.

I'm glad I don't have that seat. It also isn't as simple as you're making it out to be either, but, unfortunately I can't go into it here on the blogs because those who are involved have already enough complications to deal with.

You're implying that she's trying to do something akin to comment spam - she's not.

She's just saying that if you write something that is relevant to a company (and thus might be of interest to investors) then you should tag it as such. Not really any different to e.g. Technorati tags.

Of course, you could abuse the system (as you have in this post). I guess you're just trying to see how resilient the system is to spam attacks (or maybe just doing your bit to help Google identify possible problems).

Your post implies that Rebecca Mackinnon is somehow trying to game the system, which is obviously false. She's using the system as it was intended. You're not.

David: geeeessshhh. I was having a little fun and trying to write a post in a funny way.

Anyway, there are those (cough, Christopher Coulter), who claim that blogging is spamming the search engines.

But, yeah, if you look at it from a pedantic point of view you're right. Thanks giving me the opportunity to explain what I was trying to communicate.

This is fascinating. Is everyine missing what Scoble sees here? If you put the ticker into a post heading then Google Finance will (allegedly) pick it up. Think what that means about corproate social responsibility. What does it mean for traditional forms of financial analysis? Thinka bout the rich information investors can now get that would otherwise be hidden to them. Think what this means for those financial analyst relations firms that today take little notice of blogs? This is much bigger than Yahoo! and China - this is about how corporations are perceived and how it impacts their valuations- IMO.

Oops. Sorry. I've been struggling with spam recently, so i think i'm a bit oversensitive. I'll now go to your "Flame Scoble" post and write a flame about how your jokes go flying over my head :)

Actually, i've just checked and she's got it wrong: The current YHOO page on Google Finance has links which don't have 'YHOO' in their page, and the link is to results from a blog search on "yahoo+inc" (not YHOO).

Blogs are potentially a valuable way to provide investors with unfiltered perspectives both from companies themselves and from anyone who has an interest in their activities.

But I fear that Google Finance’s implementation is doing more harm than good.

No one at Google, Yahoo or Microsoft wants to own up to the fact that they are tacitly supporting censorship in China.
As long as companies want to wear their hobnailed boots and goose step along with the repression of civil rights to turn a dollar its ok.
The dollar is more important.
I believe your phrase "billions of dollars" speaks for itself.
Yes I have known people in China since the 60s, and yes I communicate with them but there are topics that cannot be discussed via the Internet.

As much as I agree with what Rebecca is saying about the companies involved, I disagree with the way she is doing it.

Her opinion should be her opinion and if people like it then they link to her and word spreads - and she gets noticed.

Her hijacking of a what I consider to be a wider public service like Google Finance is wrong and is nothing short of indirect spam.

Her opinion should be her opinion and if people like it then they link to her and word spreads - and she gets noticed.

Look at who she is writing about. What resources do they have at their disposal? This feature levels the playing field somewhat.

Without this, only those with the economic resources to buy visibility get their point of view across. News releases, advertising, print etc. This feature gives her and the company (which can also use the blog posts feature) a venue for engagement.

People can read both sides. Without this, they are very likely to get one side only.

Umm, the original post was in error - you have to use the name, not the symbol.

I explain this in a post of my own:

Google Finance, Blogs, and Politics