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Updated Wednesday, January 27, 2010 10:17 am TWN, The China Post news staff

Is Google's threat to quit China principle or posture?

Many in the business world were stunned by the recent news that Internet search giant Google may quit the Chinese market. According to reports, Google is saying they may have had enough of the mainland's extreme censorship policies and recent cyber attacks on Google's wildly popular Gmail service blamed on Chinese hackers. Foreign business people and tourists visiting China are sometimes surprised to discover just how intense Chinese Internet censorship is. Those attempting to access the social networking site Facebook for example, will discover that their profile and those of their friends can be viewed in China, but Facebook subscribers are not allowed to make any changes to their page such as adding status updates or writing replies to messages. That means for international Facebook users in China, the site is a window to the rest of the world but that window is closed for two-way traffic. Internet censorship in China is everywhere and is not a secret. Chinese citizens know they are being policed online. Anything politically sensitive or pornographic is blocked out. Go to the Chinese Google page and search for the “Tiananmen Incident” and one likely finds either non-related info on the famous Beijing square itself or a message saying words to the effect that your quest for such info has been denied.

It would be one thing if an international social networking site such as Facebook were to threaten to pull out of the Chinese market. Facebook is — despite its 350 million active users — still small enough to make decisions based on principle. Google however, is an entirely different story. Google is worth tens of billions of dollars and is one of the most important companies in the world; a leader in search engines, e-mail and other web-based solutions. Founded by two Stanford University students — Sergey Brin and Larry Page — Google became a privately held company in 1998 and went public in 2004. Since its IPO, Google has consistently led the search engine market and is even dabbled in non-web based products such as computers and smart phones in reasonably successful attempts to take on other corporate giants such as Apple Inc. Google's announcement that it is seriously considering quitting China is a big deal and industry watchers and analysts are debating the implications.

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