| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2005 |
| Founder(s) | |
| Headquarters | Beijing, People's Republic of China |
| Area served | People's Republic of China |
| Industry | Internet, Computer software |
| Parent | Google Inc. |
| Website | www.google.cn (redirected to www.google.com.hk since March 2010, some services have been partially or fully blocked in mainland China[1]) |
| Alexa rank | 134 (January 2012[update])[2] |
Google China (Chinese: 谷歌; pinyin: Gǔgē) is a subsidiary of Google, Inc., the world's largest Internet search engine company. Google China ranks as the number 2 search engine in the People's Republic of China, after Baidu. In 2010, searching via all Google search sites, including Google Mobile, were moved from Mainland China to Hong Kong.
Contents |
Google China was founded in 2005 and was originally headed by Kai-Fu Lee, a former Microsoft executive and the founder in 1998 of Microsoft Research Asia.[3] Microsoft sued Google and Kai-Fu Lee for the move, but reached a confidential settlement.[4] Google's Beijing based office was initially located at NCI Tower.
In 2005, a Chinese-language interface was developed for the google.com website. In Jan 2006, Google launched its China-based google.cn search page with results subject to censorship by the Chinese government.
The Beijing office was moved to Tsinghua Science Park in early 2006. The newest office has been in use since September 2006. It is a 10-floor building located in Tsinghua Science Park, near the south gate of Tsinghua University.
In Mar 2009, China blocked access to Google's YouTube site; access to other Google online services is denied to users on an ad hoc basis.
On September 4, 2009, after four years leading Google China, Kai-Fu Lee announced his surprise departure to start a venture fund amid debate about the Chinese government's censorship policies and Google's decreasing share to rival Baidu.[3]
In Jan 2010, Google announced that they and other US tech companies had been hacked and that Google is no longer willing to censor searches in China and may pull out of the country.[5]
On March 23, 2010 at 3 am Hong Kong Time (UTC+8), Google started to redirect all search queries from Google.cn to Google.com.hk. (Google Hong Kong), thereby bypassing Chinese regulators and allowing uncensored Simplified Chinese search results.[6][7][8] As a special entity recognized by international treaty, Hong Kong is vested with independent judicial power[9] and not subject to most Chinese laws,[10] including those requiring the restriction of free flow of information and censorship of internet materials.
David Drummond, senior vice president of Google, stated in the official Google blog that the current circumstances surrounding censorship of the Internet in Mainland China led Google to make such a decision. Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region in China with a comparably higher level of freedom of speech and expression, and google.com.hk does not censor search results, making it more effective for networking and sharing information with Internet users in mainland China.[8][11] Google's internet mail service, Gmail, is available to mainland China users. Google has maintained that it would continue with the research and development offices in China along with the sales offices for other Google products such as Android smartphone software.[12]
On March 30, 2010, searching via all Google search sites (not only google.cn but all language versions, e.g. google.co.jp. google.com.au, etc.), including Google Mobile, was banned in Mainland China. Any attempt to search using Google resulted in a DNS error. Other Google services such as Google Mail and Google Maps appeared to be unaffected.[13] Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at UC Berkeley and founder of the China Digital Times, noted that the ban in mainland China could eventually block all access to Google sites and applications if the Chinese Government wanted.[13] The ban was lifted the day after.[14]
On June 30, 2010, Google ended the automatic redirect of Google China to Google Hong Kong, and instead placed a link to Google Hong Kong to avoid getting their Internet Content Provider (ICP) license revoked.
Google China serves a market of mainland Chinese Internet users that was estimated in July 2009 to number 338 million.[15] This estimate is up from 45.8 million in June 2002, according to a survey report from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released on June 30, 2002.[16] A CNNIC report published a year and a half earlier, on January 17, 2001, estimated that the mainland Chinese Internet user base numbered 22.5 million people; this was considerably higher than the number published by Iamasia, a private Internet ratings company.[17] The first CNNIC report, published on October 10, 1997, estimated the number of Chinese internet users at fewer than 650 thousand people.
The competitors of Google China include Baidu.com, often called the "Google of China" because of its resemblance and similarity to Google.[18][19] In August 2008, Google China launched a legal music download service, Google Music, to rival Baidu's potentially illicit offering.[20]
Google China has a market share in China of 29% according to Analysys International.[21]
Before Google China's establishment, Google.com itself was accessible, even though much of its content was not accessible because of censorship. According to official statistics, google.com was accessible 90% of the time, and a number of services were not available at all.[22]
Since announcing its intent to comply with Internet censorship laws in the People's Republic of China, Google China had been the focus of controversy over what critics view as capitulation to the "Golden Shield Project". Because of its self-imposed censorship, whenever people searched for prohibited Chinese keywords on a blocked list maintained by the PRC government, google.cn displayed the following at the bottom of the page (translated): In accordance with local laws, regulations and policies, part of the search result is not shown. Some searches, such as (as of June 2009) "Tank Man" were blocked entirely, with only the message "Search results may not comply with the relevant laws, regulations and policy, and can not be displayed" appearing.
Google argued that it could play a role more useful to the cause of free speech by participating in China's IT industry than by refusing to comply and being denied admission to the mainland Chinese market. "While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission," a statement said.[23]
A PBS analysis reported clear differences between results returned for controversial keywords by the censored and uncensored search engines.[24] Google set up computer systems inside China that try to access Web sites outside the country. If a site is inaccessible (e.g., because of the Golden Shield Project), then it was added to Google China's blacklist.[25]
In June 2006, Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, was quoted as saying virtually all of Google's customers in China were using the non-censored version of their website.[26]
Google critics in the United States claimed that Google China is a flagrant violation of the Google motto, "Don't be evil." [27]
On April 9, 2007, Google China spokesman Cui Jin admitted that the pinyin Google Input Method Editor (IME) "was built leveraging some non-Google database resources". This was in response to a request on April 6 from the Chinese search engine company Sohu that Google stop distributing its pinyin IME software because it allegedly copied portions from Sohu's own software.[28]
In early 2008, Guo Quan, a university professor who had been dismissed after having founded a democratic opposition party, announced plans to sue Yahoo! and Google in the United States for having blocked his name from search results in mainland China.[29]
On January 12, 2010, Google announced that it was "no longer willing to continue censoring" results on Google.cn, citing a breach of Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The company found that the hackers had breached two Gmail accounts but were only able to access 'from' and 'to' information and subject headers of emails in these accounts.[30] The company's investigation into the attack showed that at least 34 other companies had been similarly targeted. Among the companies that were attacked were Adobe Systems, Symantec, Yahoo, Northrop Grumman and Dow Chemical. Experts claim the aim of the attacks was to gain information on weapon systems, political dissidents, and valuable source code that powers software applications.[31] Additionally, dozens of Gmail accounts in China, Europe, and the United States had been regularly accessed by third parties, by way of phishing or malware on the users' computers rather than a security breach at Google. Although Google did not explicitly accuse the Chinese government of the breach, it said it was no longer willing to censor results on google.cn, and that it will discuss over the next few weeks "the basis on which we could run an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."[32][33] Google.cn transiently turned off its search result filtering. However, the filtering was later re-enabled without any acknowledgment or explanation; search queries in Chinese on the keywords Tiananmen or June 4, 1989 returned censored results with the standard censorship footnote.[34]
On January 13, 2010, the news agency AHN reported that the U.S. Congress plans to investigate Google's allegations that the Chinese government used the company's service to spy on human rights activists.[35] In a major speech by the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, analogies were drawn between the Berlin Wall and the free and unfree Internet.[36] Chinese articles came back saying that the U.S. uses the internet as a means to create worldwide hegemony based on western values.[37] The issue of Google's changed policy toward China has been cited as a potentially major development in world affairs, marking a split between authoritarian capitalism and the Western model of free capitalism and Internet access.[38]
The Chinese government has since made numerous standard and general statements on the matter, but has taken no real actions. It also criticized Google for failing to provide any evidence of its accusation.[39] Accusations were made by Baidu, a competing Chinese search engine, that Google was pulling out for financial rather than humanitarian reasons. Baidu is the market leader in China with about 60% of the market share compared to Google's 31%, Yahoo placing third with less than 10%.[40] China Daily published a scathing op-ed on Google which criticized western leaders for politicizing the way in which China controls citizen's access to the Internet, saying "implementing monitoring according to a country's national context is what any government has to do," and that China's need to censor the internet is greater than that of developed countries, "The Chinese society has generally less information bearing capacity than developed countries such as the U.S. ..."[41]
Joseph Cheng, a professor of political science from City University of Hong Kong pointed out that the ruling Chinese Communist Party was deploying Chinese nationalism to stifle debate about censorship.[42] By criticizing cultural export (in this case, the localization of Google in China), it provides defence to justify the Chinese authorities' censorship control.[42]
The Chinese authority is accused of steering state-run media to bundle Google together with other recent disputes with United States that have stirred nationalist rancour in China. On the website of the Global Times (www.huanqiu.com) such examples are found, one user wrote "Get the hell out" while another one wrote "Ha ha, I'm going to buy firecrackers to celebrate!".[42]
According to Isaac Mao, a high profile Chinese Internet expert, maybe 90% of Internet users in China don't care whether Google leaves or not. For Chinese users who strongly support Google's stay in China without censorship (or leaving China to keep its neutrality and independence), some are accustomed to use circumvention technology to access blocked websites.[43]
[[diq:Google China]]