The Mountain View, Calif., company announced this decision on Tuesday, merely 10 days after the Chinese government replenished its Internet Content Provider (ICP) license in China, ending an deadlock with Chinese authorities which had asked the firm to censor some of its contents for the users to continue its operation in the country, and there and then the U.S. firm said it would phase out censored search deals with its Chinese partners.
This announcement stems from the company’s decision in March to stop censoring its search results in China, when the search and advertising giant began redirecting visitors from the mainland China version of its website to the Hong Kong version, which does not block search results on political topics, after a censorship row with the Chinese government.
The decision angered Chinese officials and a possible retaliation by Beijing against the firm and threatened to derail Google’s many partnerships with other Chinese companies, thereby crippling its ability to retain Chinese users and advertisers.
Google’s plan includes closure of two Tianya social-networking services this week, according to a posting today on the U.S. company’s Chinese blog page. Furthermore, Google will also discontinue a self-developed website ranking page and a lifestyle site in China. The decision was taken because of “lower-than-expected demand,” China Daily reported, citing a company statement.
“It is now a fitting opportunity” for Google to reassess its engineering team to allow them to focus on other new and existing products, according to the blog posting. The Mountain View, California-based company this month won renewal of its Internet license in China, defusing a censorship row with regulators of the world’s biggest online market.
“We are in the process of winding down our cooperation with Tianya,” Google spokeswoman Jessica Powell said in a statement. In 2007, Google began offering the Tianya services after investing an undisclosed amount in the Chinese partner.
“In the future, Google and Tianya will individually operate two different question-and-answer services. To the users who enjoyed these products, we apologize,” Google said in a Chinese-language blog post.
To continue operating in the country, Google has amended its China homepage, Google.cn, to ensure that the website does not automatically link to any search services that provide uncensored results. Currently Google.cn acts as a “landing page” that provides a clickable link to Google’s uncensored Hong Kong search engine.
In a blog post, Google also announced it would be shutting down two of its products in China. Google’s “rebang,” or hot list website, along with its “shenghuo,” or life page, will both be closed due to lack of user interest.
“We have always been trying to develop new products and services for our users. Some enjoyed great success while others failed,” the statement said.
“We know that during the past few months everyone has had many questions about our products,” the blog post said. “In China, the website ranking page and lifestyle site were not welcomed by our users, that is why we decided to shut them down.”
Zhang Feng, director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s Telecoms Development Department, told a news conference Tuesday that Google has promised to “abide by Chinese law” and will avoid linking to material deemed a threat to national security or social stability.
The renewal of the Internet license will certainly elevate the confidence of advertisers in Google, Nelly Jin, an analyst at iResearch, said yesterday. The Shanghai-based research company has an “optimistic” outlook on Google’s operations in China.
Uncertainty has been lurking around Google’s operations in China because Beijing could revoke the license for the U.S. firm’s website at any time or block access to Google services.
“Our operations in China are completely at the mercy of the Chinese government,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said this month.
During its disagreement with Chinese government, Google’s search-engine market share dropped to 30.9 per cent in the first quarter from 35.6 per cent three months earlier. Rival Baidu Inc.’s share rose to 70.8 percent from 67.8 percent, according to iResearch.