It’s been an ongoing battle since January, but now it may really be happening: the climax of the Google China drama may be approaching.
According to US media reports, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has told reporters that “something will happen soon.”
Google threatened to pull out of China back in January, amidst allegations of hacking, and complaints about China’s strict censorship policies. However, as the rumour mill spun over the past few months, many speculated that Google’s threats were empty ones.
And, it seems to now appear that Google has missed a deadline to re-register as an internet content provider in the country, leaving many speculating that this is yet another sign that Google will shortly pull out of the world’s biggest e-market.
China has not seemed to have any qualms about Google closing its doors. And why would it? It’s already banned Facebook, Twitter and Youtube within its borders. What’s another western website giant?
It seems that negotiations between Google and the Chinese government that took place over the weekend were fruitless. No agreement could be reached over the issues of hacking or censorship. The Wall Street Journal reported that Google failed to convince the Chinese government to make any concessions on its strict censorship policies. Google officials have been reported as being “99.9 percent” sure that plans to shut down their Chinese service will be implemented.
Just one day before the negotiations, the Chinese minister of industry and information technology Li Yizhong restated China’s policy that Google should obey Chinese laws if it wants to continue operations in their country.
Li stated that while China isn’t going to kick Google out (indeed it welcomes Google to stay, so long as it obeys the laws), the country will “follow procedures” should Google decide to quit.
Google, for its part, has described its Chinese revenues as immaterial, having gotten a foothold on only about one-third of the Chinese search market.
Meanwhile, a group of 27 Chinese advertising agencies has sent Google a letter stating that it will demand compensation for business losses, should the company close its doors in the country. The Chinese advertisers were reportedly not happy about having been kept in the dark about Google’s plans.
However, Google has not officially commented on the broken down negotiations, but the company said Monday that an announcement regarding the situation would be made shortly.
Kaila Krayewski is a freelance journalist with a passion for all things internet. Having worked for nearly two years as the public relations manager for an internation search engine optimization company, and publishing hundreds of articles (how-to, informational, and otherwise) on SEO, she knows a thing or two about the field. Furthermore, having just started up her own website blondetraveler.com, she is doing her best to keep one step ahead of the search engines in order to keep the traffic flowing.
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Tags: Google China
