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The trial of former Security Chief Zhou Yongkang is held in Tianjin, China, in secrecy. He is senteched to life in prison in June 2015. This is part of president Xi Jinping's fight against corruption in China.

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Lower prices have boosted unit sales for Microsoft and Autodesk for Chinese operations. Autodesk now sells its software for about half the price in the USA. Autodesk saw a doubling of licenses in China to 300,000 after slashing prices. Microsoft sells Windows 7 Home Basic for 399 yuan or $59, a third of the price in the USA. By reducing margins, Microsoft makes up for it in volumes, says Microsoft's China CEO. IDC and Business Software Alliance estimate that 79% of the PC software installed in China in 2009 was pirated, down from 86% in 2005. Lower prices make Chinese buyers more willing to invest, and education helps to increase the value of using legitimate copies. China's PC market is expected to be 67 million units in 2010, behind 78 million in the USA, but software sales in China are only $5.8 billion, behind the US sales of $143.6 billion. This makes the potential for software sales large at the right prices.

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Adam Bryant interviews Steve Case, founder of AOL online, on the lessons learned from the failure of the AOL Time Warner merger and failures in execution.

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A study by BuzzFeed shows that all but three of 20 fake stories by hoax sites or hyper partisan elements with likes on Facebook spread fake news with stories on Trump or denigrating Hillary Clinton. During the last 3 months of the campaign in 2016 the fake stories or bogus news stories appearing online and on social media had a greater reach than authoritative reporting by mainstream news outlets, according to a study of Facebook activity by BuzzFeed. President Obama and chancellor Merkel took aim at the fake stories on social media and hate opinions in talking to the public in Berlin at their final meeting in November 2016. Obama said "because in an age when there is so much active misinformation and it is packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on television." He added it is a big problem that 43 percent of eligible voters do not vote and when "we are not serious about facts and what's true and what's not, particularly in age of social media when so many people are getting their information in sound bites and off their phones." Merkel compared the situation today with digitization to the social disruptions during the Industrial Revolution and gave her own warnings. ...

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Specialized websites such as Realtor.com,Trulia, Zillow in the US and Rightmove in the UK have customized features appropriate for the field. In this case real estate search. This vertical search is proving superior to the horizontal search of the world's 182 million websites that Google searches, when it comes to specialized tasks. Restaurant reservations has OpenTable, job-hunting has Simply Hired. These sites do more than simply search, they also complete transactional tasks which Google doesn't. In the retail Amazon is adding new features specialized to the retail field, and also has consolidated online retail. Right now Google has 69.4% of the search market to Bing's 24.4%. For Google 96% of revenues come from search, even with diversification efforts through Android (mobile devices), YouTube (video advertising), and Chrome (browser software). Google acquired ITA Software in 2010 to compete in the travel field. Rayport says the search business is changing with users geting more sophisticated and demanding, and he sees a shift to vertical search. This shift appears to be the next step as the capabilities of horizontal search are being exhausted....

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According to a report from China's Environment Ministry for the first half of 2013, only 4 cities met the acceptable air quality standards. The national grade 2 standard in China is for 35 micrograms per cubic meter for levels of airborne particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrograms in diameter. WHO standard is for 25 micrograms per cubic meter in a 24 hour period. The 4 cities with acceptable air qualty out of 74 cities monitored by the Environment Ministry are Lhasa in Tibet, island city Haikou, coastal town Zhoushan, and Pearl River Delta city of Huizhou.

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Air pollution concerns are leading China's National Development Reform Commission to set a higher goal for cleaner energy. The NDRC plans a 52 gigawatt increase in installed capacity for green energy in 2013, an increase from 36 gigawatts in 2012. This includes 10 gigawatts for solar energy. Clean energy will take up 57% of additions to installed capacity in 2013, compared to 35% in 2010, according to Tian Miao, an energy anayst at NSBO.

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Jonathan Lu succeeds Jack Ma as CEO of Alibaba in March 2013.

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Alibaba's new CEO Jonathan Lu.

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New CEO Jonathan Lu of Alibaba.

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The new Ford Focus being unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show in 2009, is a new kind of car for Ford. This is a new kind of effort, a new discipline that Ford CEO Mullaly has advocated from the beginning. Making one car for all markets worldwide. Early on Mullaly told Ford's chairman Bill Ford that Boeing did not have a 737 for Europe and a 737 for the US and a 737 for Asia, why was Ford building a Focus for Europe and a Focus for the USA. In fact before Mullaly the Focus for the USA was a stripped down version of the European Focus and did not make much of an impression. The new Focus will have 80% common parts and 75% of parts from the same suppliers worldwide, so that a Focus made in Germany and the USA will share the same parts as a Focus made in Russia and a Focus made in China. And all of these plants will go into production at about the same time with the new Focus. To accomplish this transformation of Ford for "One Ford" worldwide, which is also on every business card carried by Ford managers, Mullaly appointed Derrick Kuzak as head of global manufacturing. See link for Derrick Kuzak. And the strategy was announced in mid-2008 with the start of retooling of truck factories in Mexico, Kentucky and Michigan, to make small cars designed in Europe for global markets. The task of coming up with one design for a global car was given to Martin Smith, a British designer based in Cologne, Germany. Smith says tastes are converging worldwide with the internet use, and customers are more unified than one would think, and whats emerging is a new kind of global cool if one looks for it. This is what happened when Focus protypes were shown to consumer panels in Europe, the USA and Asia, with a good impression created in all 3 markets. Aligning the US and European tastes was easier, China was a bit harder and the yellow leather interior popular in Shanghai had to be crossed out. Another challenge that had to be met in adisciplined manner was the varying safety rules and emissions around the world. For example European designers liked to have the windshield further forward, and Ford's global small car chief had to tell his engineers to move it back to meet US crumple zone standards. Similiar challenges had to be met in purchasing by global purchasing chief, Tony Brown, with a massive coordination effort needed to be done globally. And plastic trim from Michigan has to fit perfectly with sheet metal stamped in Michigan, and Ford used a virtual manufacturing system that allows the car to be built in cyberspace, and the bugs taken out at that early virtual build stage. The entire change is part of a metamorphosis at Ford, a change of culture and mastering a new discipline in coordinated effort worldwide for "One Ford." One year ago the Wayne Truck plant here in Detroit made the Navigator and the Expedition large vehicles.. With a $550 million investment this plant will make the Ford Focus a year from now. ...