Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Google '99% certain' to shut China engine
This article is a good follow up to the previous articles on the google.cn saga. According to the article, top executives remain adamant on the removal of censorship by the Chinese government. Google makes it clear that it desires to stay and do business in China but will not bow to pressure to succumb on censorship rules. Currently, Google owns about 30% of the search engine market share in China. Google will nonetheless seek to continue other branches such as its research center in Beijing. However, there are concerns that the government will make staying and doing business unbearable for Google should it choose to pull out.
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6 comments:
This article is interesting because China has the potential to be a major market for Google. It is also a good example of a Socialist government trying to control the flow of information and the economy.
This is bad news for Google; it would be better if they were able to push for some small reforms in China. Any day negotiation yields to confrontation is a bad day. And yes, the market in China is huge.
This is bad news for Google; it would be better if they were able to push for some small reforms in China. Any day negotiation yields to confrontation is a bad day. And yes, the market in China is huge.
This seems to be a very popular article in the news and generating a lot of buzz on the blogs. I know there have been several articles concerning googles closure on the economist recently highlighting firms increasing struggles to do business in China. As google plans to retract from China, other firms are finding it equally challenging to capitalize on China's vast potential markets. In large part, the Chinese Government and the Communist Party rule China's clouted financial institutions. Therefore, working out who makes the decisions is almost impossible at times. It seems quite clear that the Chinese Government has stepped in to control the flow of money and information as Kevin mentions above..
This is an interesting article for two reasons. It seems as if this has been an ongoing problem with China and Google, and finally something is happening. I also just posted an article about how our ties with China are very thin right now, as they are possibly considered a "currency manipulator" as well as they sold arms to Taiwan. It will be interesting to see how everything plays out in the near future.
Google has been threatening to end its ties with China for months now - I recently read another article about the loopholes Chinese citizens take in order to bypass censorship by the government (i.e. purchasing "hacking" software from European countries). It just goes to show that there are ways to get around the censorship and if people want to then they will. It will be interesting to see if the Chinese government will lift - or even negotiate- internet censorship or if Google will discontinue its services and lose a substantial market share in the economy.
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