Google ‘99.9 Percent’ Sure to Shut Down in China

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-13/google-99-9-percent-sure-to-shut-down-in-china-ft-says.html

by jacquesm • 16 years ago

27 22 16 years ago

garply2• 16 years ago

The rumor I've heard here in Beijing is that, among other things, the Chinese government was interested in the actual search-engine tech to help fuel their own CCTV search engine (which is to eventually be expanded beyond video search). Baidu is not considered friendly enough to government policies, so they want to spin their own version.

Just a rumor, but it doesn't sound too outlandish to me.

(An interesting and tangential question is how good could a state-run search engine be? My personal belief is that they could make it pretty good if they really focused on it (consider, for example, the Soviet Union and the nuclear arms race)).

jacquesm3• 16 years ago

There was an aborted attempt at a German/French initiative that was supposed to become the de-facto search engine for the European Union.

I personally don't think a state run search engine stands even a tiny chance.

garply2• 16 years ago

Presumably the Germans / French had a lot less to lose with a failed search engine, whereas the Chinese stand to lose control of the next medium of communication.

I'm sure in the minds of many of the people planning this, the idea is that the internet is just the latest iteration of communication technology (like the newspaper, TV, etc), and as such the government should have a significant presence there in the same way as it does with The People's Daily and CCTV.

ratsbane• 16 years ago

Unclear from that article how much of the JP Morgan estimate of $600 million/year revenue to Google from China is from ads sold on Google and viewed in China (.cn/.com) and how much from sales to Chinese advertisers viewed anywhere on Google. Revenue from the latter case isn't likely to suffer from a pullout.

buster2• 16 years ago

I have very mixed feelings about that. It's good when such a big company takes those measures. But in the end it will harm google more then it will do good, as no other company will follow.

And Chinas government may be very happy, the got rid of _the_ source for political information for the people and now can work further on controlling the rest.

sern2• 16 years ago

If Google quits, they will no longer be subject to Chinese law, which will open up all sorts of possibilities.

csytan• 16 years ago

What sort of possibilities? I'm running some sites on Google's AppEngine, and recently found out that it is blocked due to the GFW. I don't see any signs of that changing, especially with this new policy.

idlewords• 16 years ago

Google Chine _the_ source of political information for the people? Why on earth do you think this?

buster2• 16 years ago

If you didn't know: Google is all about finding, sharing and publishing information.

est• 16 years ago

> _the_ source for political information for the people and now can work further on controlling the rest.

It never got control. Chinese people love gossip and rumors. The govn't just do not want anyone to discuss stuff 'publicly'.

needadvice• 16 years ago

I have no doubt that Goog will continue to operate in China. At the end of the day, there's way too much money on the table to do something as drastic as that.

KWD2• 16 years ago

One other article I read indicated that it was only the search engine itself they were looking to shut down, and not other operations. If that is the case, I'd be sorely disappointed in Google.

helwr• 16 years ago

this article by WSJ is more insightful: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870344710457511...

KWD2• 16 years ago

The problem with the link is it's behind a subscriber paywall. In this case, I'm not even going to go through the trouble of using Google News first click to read it. I've gotten the news through many other resources.

freshfunk• 16 years ago

The typical argument is that China cannot resist the money. But, to be a devil's advocate here, perhaps they think that it's MORE risky to their business to stay in China. That is, someone was trying to steal their technology. If someone got their hands on their secret sauce algorithms that would surely put the business, as a whole, at risk considering it's their one real moneymaker.

j_baker• 16 years ago

"An exit from the world’s biggest Internet market would cost Google, whose sales growth slowed during the U.S. recession, $600 million in revenue, according to estimates by JPMorgan Chase & Co."

On the other hand, I wonder how much it's costing them. Once you add in all the costs of filtering the Chinese searches, I could see them not making as much profit as you'd expect. But this is sheer conjecture on my part. It's also possible that Google's bluffing.

Google ‘99.9 Percent’ Sure to Shut Down in China

Related Stories