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TwitterIn a business plan that continues to become more complicated by the minute, Google’s Chinese blunder is one that consistently continues to backfire. As Chinese partners close doors on the internet giant it is apparent that censorship in the Chinese domain is one that Google will not be able to avoid.
On Thursday, a public-relations director for Sina Corp., a popular Chinese Internet portal that carries a Google search bar, said it is considering finding a new search partner. This came just a day after Tianya.cn, which runs a leading online forum, said it plans to discontinue cooperation with Google on some projects. On Wednesday, TOM Group Ltd., a media company controlled by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-Shing, said it had removed Google’s search bar from its Chinese portal.
Google vs China
Google had announced on Monday that it had stopped censoring its Chinese search services for the Web, news and images, and moved them to Hong Kong. It now redirects traffic to the relocated site from its Chinese address, Google.cn. The move prompted an angry response from the Chinese government, but so far authorities haven’t blocked access to the Google.cn address or to the Hong Kong site, Google.com.hk.
Google is the default search engine for China Mobile Ltd., the world’s largest mobile-phone operator by subscribers. But Wang Jianzhou, chairman of the state-owned carrier, said last week that the company’s cooperation with Google isn’t exclusive and that China Mobile is also working with Microsoft Corp.’s Bing and other search engines. China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd., another state-owned carrier, on Wednesday said it decided not to preinstall Google search on an Android handset manufactured by Motorola that it introduced earlier this month. Also, Motorola Inc has dropped Google from one of its Android phones in China.
Google’s relationship with its advertising resellers and partners in China is directly proportional to how much revenue it earns and how strong its presence in the world’s most populous and seemingly high potential market. It is currently estimated at 1-2% of its global revenue, $250-500 billion, last year. Though it is slated to be an attractive ad platform even for the future, how much of the remaining two-thirds or so of Google’s China revenue is sustainable is what looks murky. Howver, The continued uncertainty over Google’s future in China has prompted some of its domestic Chinese advertisers to consider withdrawing their ads. An official in the marketing department of one Google advertiser, toy seller Wanjuke.com, said Google’s move this week has “definitely affected us. Actually, we are considering withdrawing from Google, since we think Google is too politicized and worry about whether Google’s domain will be blocked.”
Also in question is Google’s AdSense ad network, which places advertisements on other Web sites.
Google’s operations in China include video-search, music and map services, and a mobile Web site—some of these run in partnership with Chinese companies. Google has obligations to fulfill its contracts with those companies, which must remain in compliance with censorship rules, even if Google isn’t. Though Google will continue to provide censored search results to partners in cases where it has a contractual obligation to do so; it says that it won’t renew those contracts, so the obligations will be phased out over time. Certain products, however, such as Google Maps and its music-download service, are likely to remain censored.
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