Posts Tagged ‘china’

Google Closing Down Its Search Engine in China

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

After two months of dispute with the Chinese Government, Google has decided to shut down its operations in China which includes shutting down its search engine in that country as well. This comes after a series of hacking attempts on Google servers along with the server of several other firms. The hacking attempt was believed to be originated from China and possibly from the government itself.

Previously, Google had responded to the attack by saying that it may shut down its operation center in China and even stop censoring results coming from the region. The country has one of the biggest government controlled internet censorship in the world and a lot of websites are blocked by this massive firewall. Google previously agreed to censor the search engine results as a bid to start its operation center and a search engine in the country that has one of the largest Internet users on Earth.

However, in 22 March, Google decided to shut down its Google.cn website and reroutes all traffic to the Google.com.hk which is the search engine for people in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong search engine is not censored and this action made by Google had angered the Chinese Government.

It is yet unknown on what the Chinese government would do but chances are, they will block all access to Google.cn.

Google to Close Its Office in China

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

After a series of attack by hackers believed to be from China and was further believed to have been paid by the Chinese government, Google threatened to stop censoring web results from search inquiries made from China.

The Chinese government however said that this move is not welcomed and if Google is not respecting by the Chinese laws, they will not be welcomed in the communist country. There have been talks between the people in Google and the Chinese government but there have been rumors that the company will soon remove its China base.

China now has one of the largest Internet users in the whole world with more than 300 million users which is a lot more than the United States users as well. However, a lot of these web users stick with the local search engine Baidu instead of Google and the American company has find it quite hard to compete with the local search engine as well.

By bailing out from China, Google is removing all potential chances of tapping into the country’s Internet users which is expected to be more than half a billion users in years to come.