An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today on some things that American technology companies are doing in addition to donations to help out with quake relief. Google, Microsoft and IBM are all using their technology in various ways to help out:

Acting largely on its own initiative, the mostly China-based Google team built an Internet search engine to help people locate relatives and friends in the quake zone whose names might have been posted on online bulletin boards or chat rooms. In less than a day, and just three days after the May 12 earthquake, Google China's Lost Loved Ones (www.google.cn/qinren) was up and running. Five days after the quake, the search engine had been used 500,000 times, the company says.

Google wasn't the only technology company that donated know-how, as well as cash, to quake-stricken areas of China. Microsoft Corp. helped develop a Web site for a local government that needed to make its growing databases of survivors and victims publicly available. In addition, a team of 50 International Business Machines Corp. engineers is installing an open-source software system for the city of Chengdu, Sichuan's capital, to serve as a central database on some 500,000 refugees and to help manage relief efforts. In many cases, the goal is to speed access to information stored in a patchwork of computer systems or even old-fashioned piles of paper.

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Their relief contributions may help the three tech companies build goodwill in China, whose information-technology market is growing fast and is expected to be worth $53.54 billion this year, according to market researcher IDC. But Google, Microsoft and IBM all say they weren't motivated by business considerations.

Perhaps not, but I am sure they won't turn up their noses at any goodwill that may result. Given that this is a fairly positive story in the Wall Street Journal, its also a nice change of pace for US coverage of Microsoft and Google's activities in China. It's a refreshing change for them from being slammed for abetting the Chinese censorship apparatus.

In fact the article reports Microsoft's and Google's programs are genuinely grass-roots employee efforts rather than engineered corporate social responsibility activities. IBM, on the other hand, made IT a substantial part of its official quake donation and was actually criticized for its pains by Chinese netizens who saw this as a stealth sales opportunity or compensation for lack of a corporate financial donation. (IBM did have a substantial employee donation drive.) I found that quite surprising given IBM's generally solid reputation in China, but post-disaster passions among Chinese netizens produced a few surprises along these lines.

Speaking of which, I also note today that Chinese developer Vanke has been working to climb out of an earthquake donation hole. From China Daily:

Shareholders of China Vanke Co, the country's largest publicly traded property developer, have approved a decision to spend 100 million yuan to rebuild homes in quake-stricken Sichuan.

The company has been under fire from netizens since the earthquake after Wang Shi, its high-profile chairman, announced the real estate giant would donate 2 million yuan to the quake-hit areas and told his employees not to donate more than 10 yuan.

In the face of the ensuing barrage of criticism by the media and netizens, Wang apologized on his blog. At yesterday's meeting, he apologized to shareholders as well: "I want to apologize unconditionally to all shareholders, I won't try to defend myself."

Wang also admitted his comments about quake donations have damaged Vanke's brand image and he was sorry for that.

As a lesson from this episode, Wang said, Vanke would have a spokesperson in the future and try to desist from doing anything that hits its share prices, as it did this time.

"If Vanke's performance suffers because of my personal comments, I will resign immediately," said Wang.

As David Wolf (Twitter: @wolfgroupasia) pointed out to me in a tweet today, 100m RMB is still a rounding error for Vanke, which has 50bn RMB in annual revenues. But it was the very abject apology that I found particularly interesting. True the Chinese Internet may forget all about this in a month or so, as noted in that same Twitter stream by Matthew Stinson (@stinson), but I think they'll forget about it sooner if he's off the blacklists.