Google to Review Operations in China
Google may end operations in China.
Google may end operations in China after hackers targeted Chinese human rights activists’ e-mail accounts. The company did not accuse the Chinese government directly but said it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine google.cn. This could result in closing the site, and its Chinese offices, Google said.
Google said the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were the primary target of the attack, which occurred in December. The search engine has now said it will hold talks with the government in the coming weeks to look at operating an unfiltered search engine within the law in the country, though no changes to filtering had yet been made.
Google launched google.cn in 2006, agreeing to some censorship of the search results, as required by the Chinese government. It currently holds around a third of the Chinese search market, far behind Baidu with more than 60%.
Nearly 340 million Chinese people now online, compared with 10 million only a decade ago. Last year, the search engine market in China was worth an estimated $1bn and analysts previously expected Google to make about $600m from China in 2010. But unlike most markets, Google comes second in search in China. It has 31% of the market compared with about 60% controlled by market leader Baidu, which has a close relationship with the Chinese government. Yahoo has less than 10%. Microsoft has a tiny share of the Chinese market with its new Bing search engine, but in December the technology giant said it was committed to China, calling it “the most important strategic market”.