Google China
Encyclopedia
Google China is a subsidiary of Google, Inc., the world's largest Internet search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...

 company. Google China ranks as the number 2 search engine in the People's Republic of China, after Baidu
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. , simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China....

. In 2010, searching via all Google search sites, including Google Mobile, were moved from Mainland China
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...

 to Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

.

History

Google China was founded in 2005 and was originally headed by Kai-Fu Lee, a former Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 executive and the founder in 1998 of Microsoft Research Asia
Microsoft Research Asia
Microsoft Research Asia, Microsoft’s fundamental research arm in the Asia Pacific region, was founded on November 5, 1998. In 2004, Technology Review named Microsoft Research Asia “the hottest computer lab in the world”....

. Microsoft sued Google and Kai-Fu Lee for the move, but reached a confidential settlement. Google's Beijing based office was initially located at NCI Tower.

In 2005, a Chinese-language interface was developed for the google.com website. In Jan 2006, Google launched its China-based google.cn search page with results subject to censorship by the Chinese government.

The Beijing office was moved to Tsinghua Science Park
Zhongguancun
Zhongguancun , or Zhong Guan Cun, is a technology hub in Haidian District, Beijing, China.It is geographically situated in the northwestern part of Beijing city, in a band between the northwestern Third Ring Road and the northwestern Fourth Ring Road...

 in early 2006. The newest office has been in use since September 2006. It is a 10-floor building located in Tsinghua Science Park, near the south gate of Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University , colloquially known in Chinese as Qinghua, is a university in Beijing, China. The school is one of the nine universities of the C9 League. It was established in 1911 under the name "Tsinghua Xuetang" or "Tsinghua College" and was renamed the "Tsinghua School" one year later...

.

In Mar 2009, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 blocked access to Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

's YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 site; access to other Google online services is denied to users on an ad hoc basis.

On September 4, 2009, after four years leading Google China, Kai-Fu Lee announced his surprise departure to start a venture fund amid debate about the Chinese government's censorship policies and Google's decreasing share to rival Baidu
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. , simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China....

.

In Jan 2010, Google announced that they and other US tech companies had been hacked and that Google is no longer willing to censor searches in China and may pull out of the country.

On March 23, 2010 at 3 am Hong Kong Time
Hong Kong Time
Hong Kong Time is the time in Hong Kong, observed at UTC+8 all year round. The Hong Kong Observatory is the official timekeeper of the Hong Kong Time.-Time standards:...

 (UTC+8), Google started to redirect all search queries from Google.cn to Google.com.hk. (Google Hong Kong), thereby bypassing Chinese regulators and allowing uncensored Simplified Chinese search results. As a special entity recognized by international treaty, Hong Kong is vested with independent judicial power  and not subject to most Chinese law
Chinese law
Chinese law is one of the oldest legal traditions in the world. In the 20th and 21st century, law in China has been a complex mix of traditional Chinese approaches and Western influences....

s, including those requiring the restriction of free flow of information and censorship of internet materials
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. There are no specific laws or regulations which the censorship follows...

.

David Drummond, senior vice president of Google, stated in the official Google blog that the current circumstances surrounding censorship
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. There are no specific laws or regulations which the censorship follows...

 of the Internet in Mainland China
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...

 led Google to make such a decision. Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

 is a Special Administrative Region in China with a comparably higher level of freedom of speech
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...

 and expression, and google.com.hk does not censor search results, making it more effective for networking and sharing information with Internet users in mainland China. Google's internet mail service, Gmail
Gmail
Gmail is a free, advertising-supported email service provided by Google. Users may access Gmail as secure webmail, as well via POP3 or IMAP protocols. Gmail was launched as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004 and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007, though...

, is available to mainland China users. Google has maintained that it would continue with the research and development offices in China along with the sales offices for other Google products such as Android smartphone software.

On March 30, 2010, searching via all Google search sites (not only google.cn but all language versions, e.g. google.co.jp. google.com.au, etc.), including Google Mobile, was banned in Mainland China
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...

. Any attempt to search using Google resulted in a DNS error. Other Google services such as Google Mail and Google Maps
Google Maps
Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free , that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API...

 appeared to be unaffected. Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at UC Berkeley and founder of the China Digital Times, noted that the ban in mainland China could eventually block all access to Google sites and applications if the Chinese Government wanted.
The ban was lifted the day after.

On June 30, 2010, Google ended the automatic redirect of Google China to Google Hong Kong, and instead placed a link to Google Hong Kong to avoid getting their Internet Content Provider (ICP) license
ICP license
ICP license is a permit issued by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to permit China-based websites to operate in China...

 revoked.

Business

Google China serves a market of mainland Chinese Internet users that was estimated in July 2009 to number 338 million. This estimate is up from 45.8 million in June 2002, according to a survey report from the China Internet Network Information Center
China Internet Network Information Center
The China Internet Network Information Center , or CNNIC, was founded as a non-profit organization on June 3, 1997.CNNIC is the administrative agency responsible for Internet affairs under the Ministry of Information Industry of the People's Republic of China...

 (CNNIC) released on June 30, 2002. A CNNIC report published a year and a half earlier, on January 17, 2001, estimated that the mainland Chinese Internet user base numbered 22.5 million people; this was considerably higher than the number published by Iamasia, a private Internet ratings company. The first CNNIC report, published on October 10, 1997, estimated the number of Chinese internet users at fewer than 650 thousand people.

The competitors of Google China include Baidu.com
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. , simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China....

, often called the "Google of China" because of its resemblance and similarity to Google. In August 2008, Google China launched a legal music download service, Google Music, to rival Baidu's potentially illicit offering.

Google China has a market share in China of 29% according to Analysys International.

Controversies

Before Google China's establishment, Google.com itself was accessible, even though much of its content was not accessible because of censorship
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. There are no specific laws or regulations which the censorship follows...

. According to official statistics, google.com was accessible 90% of the time, and a number of services were not available at all.

Since announcing its intent to comply with Internet censorship laws in the People's Republic of China, Google China had been the focus of controversy over what critics view as capitulation to the "Golden Shield Project
Golden Shield Project
The Golden Shield Project , colloquially referred to as the Great Firewall of China is a censorship and surveillance project operated by the Ministry of Public Security division of the government of the People's Republic of China...

". Because of its self-imposed censorship, whenever people searched for prohibited Chinese keywords on a blocked list maintained by the PRC government, google.cn displayed the following at the bottom of the page (translated): In accordance with local laws, regulations and policies, part of the search result is not shown. Some searches, such as (as of June 2009) "Tank Man
Tank Man
Tank Man, or the Unknown Rebel, is the nickname of an anonymous man who stood in front of a column of Chinese Type 59 tanks the morning after the Chinese military forcibly removed protestors from in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989. The man achieved widespread international...

" were blocked entirely, with only the message "Search results may not comply with the relevant laws, regulations and policy, and can not be displayed" appearing.

Google argued that it could play a role more useful to the cause of free speech by participating in China's IT industry than by refusing to comply and being denied admission to the mainland Chinese market. "While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission," a statement said.

A PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

 analysis reported clear differences between results returned for controversial keywords by the censored and uncensored search engines. Google set up computer systems inside China that try to access Web sites outside the country. If a site is inaccessible (e.g., because of the Golden Shield Project), then it was added to Google China's blacklist.

In June 2006, Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin
Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies. , his personal wealth is estimated to be $16.7 billion....

, Google's co-founder, was quoted as saying virtually all of Google's customers in China were using the non-censored version of their website.

Google critics in the United States claimed that Google China is a flagrant violation of the Google motto, "Don't be evil
Don't Be Evil
"Don't be evil" is the informal corporate motto of Google, originally suggested by Google employees Paul Buchheit and Amit Patel at a meeting...

."

On April 9, 2007, Google China spokesman Cui Jin admitted that the pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

 Google Input Method Editor
Input method editor
An input method is an operating system component or program that allows any data, such as keyboard strokes or mouse movements, to be received as input. In this way users can enter characters and symbols not found on their input devices...

 (IME) "was built leveraging some non-Google database resources". This was in response to a request on April 6 from the Chinese search engine company Sohu
Sohu
Sohu.com, Inc. is a search engine company headquartered in the Sohu.com Internet Plaza in Haidian District, Beijing, People’s Republic of China. This company and its subsidiaries offer advertising, a search engine, on-line multiplayer gaming and other services. For the fiscal year ended December...

 that Google stop distributing its pinyin IME software because it allegedly copied portions from Sohu's own software.

In early 2008, Guo Quan
Guo Quan
Guo Quan is a Chinese human rights activist. He founded the China New Democracy Party. He is a State Owned Enterprise cadre, secretary of the Nanjing Economic Restructuring Commission and Nanjing People's Court cadre....

, a university professor who had been dismissed after having founded a democratic opposition party, announced plans to sue Yahoo! and Google in the United States for having blocked his name from search results in mainland China.

Operation Aurora

On January 12, 2010, Google announced that it was "no longer willing to continue censoring" results on Google.cn, citing a breach of Gmail
Gmail
Gmail is a free, advertising-supported email service provided by Google. Users may access Gmail as secure webmail, as well via POP3 or IMAP protocols. Gmail was launched as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004 and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007, though...

 accounts of Chinese human rights
Human rights in the People's Republic of China
Human rights in the People's Republic of China are a matter of dispute between the Chinese government, other countries, international NGOs, and dissidents inside the country. Organizations such as the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have accused the Chinese...

 activists. The company found that the hackers
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...

 had breached two Gmail accounts but were only able to access 'from' and 'to' information and subject headers of emails in these accounts. The company's investigation into the attack showed that at least 34 other companies had been similarly targeted. Among the companies that were attacked were Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...

, Symantec
Symantec
Symantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.-History:...

, Yahoo, Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American global aerospace and defense technology company formed by the 1994 purchase of Grumman by Northrop. The company was the fourth-largest defense contractor in the world as of 2010, and the largest builder of naval vessels. Northrop Grumman employs over...

 and Dow Chemical. Experts claim the aim of the attacks was to gain information on weapon systems, political dissidents, and valuable source code that powers software applications. Additionally, dozens of Gmail accounts in China, Europe, and the United States had been regularly accessed by third parties, by way of phishing
Phishing
Phishing is a way of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT...

 or malware
Malware
Malware, short for malicious software, consists of programming that is designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, or gain unauthorized access to system resources, or that otherwise exhibits abusive behavior...

 on the users' computers rather than a security breach at Google. Although Google did not explicitly accuse the Chinese government of the breach, it said it was no longer willing to censor results on google.cn, and that it will discuss over the next few weeks "the basis on which we could run an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China." Google.cn transiently turned off its search result filtering. However, the filtering was later re-enabled without any acknowledgment or explanation; search queries in Chinese on the keywords Tiananmen
Tiananmen
The Tiananmen, Tian'anmen or Gate of Heavenly Peace is a famous monument in Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is widely used as a national symbol. First built during the Ming Dynasty in 1420, Tian'anmen is often referred to as the front entrance to the Forbidden City...

 or June 4, 1989 returned censored results with the standard censorship footnote.

On January 13, 2010, the news agency AHN
All Headline News
All Headline News is a United States based news agency or wire service. Launched in 2003 it has grown to become a major worldwide online news wire service, providing news and other content, to websites, digital signage, and other publishers who pay a fee for the service.The company's daily news...

 reported that the U.S. Congress plans to investigate Google's allegations that the Chinese government used the company's service to spy on human rights activists. In a major speech by the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, analogies were drawn between the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...

 and the free and unfree Internet. Chinese articles came back saying that the U.S. uses the internet as a means to create worldwide hegemony based on western values. The issue of Google's changed policy toward China has been cited as a potentially major development in world affairs, marking a split between authoritarian capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

 and the Western model of free capitalism and Internet access.

The Chinese government has since made numerous standard and general statements on the matter, but has taken no real actions. It also criticized Google for failing to provide any evidence of its accusation. Accusations were made by Baidu, a competing Chinese search engine, that Google was pulling out for financial rather than humanitarian reasons. Baidu is the market leader in China with about 60% of the market share compared to Google's 31%, Yahoo placing third with less than 10%. China Daily
China Daily
The China Daily is an English language daily newspaper published in the People's Republic of China.- Overview :China Daily was established in June 1981 and has the widest print circulation of any English-language newspaper in the country...

 published a scathing op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...

 on Google which criticized western leaders for politicizing the way in which China controls citizen's access to the Internet, saying "implementing monitoring according to a country's national context is what any government has to do," and that China's need to censor the internet is greater than that of developed countries, "The Chinese society has generally less information bearing capacity than developed countries such as the U.S. ..."

In media

Joseph Cheng, a professor of political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

 from City University of Hong Kong
City University of Hong Kong
City University of Hong Kong is a comprehensive research university in Hong Kong. It was founded in 1984 as City Polytechnic of Hong Kong and became a fully accredited university in 1994. It has achieved fast growth in recent years and received international recognition for its academic achievements...

 pointed out that the ruling Chinese Communist Party was deploying Chinese nationalism
Chinese nationalism
Chinese nationalism , sometimes synonymous with Chinese patriotism refers to cultural, historiographical, and political theories, movements and beliefs that assert the idea of a cohesive, unified Chinese people and culture in a unified country known as China...

 to stifle debate about censorship. By criticizing cultural export (in this case, the localization
Internationalization and localization
In computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market...

 of Google in China), it provides defence to justify the Chinese authorities' censorship control.

The Chinese authority is accused of steering state-run media to bundle Google together with other recent disputes with United States that have stirred nationalist rancour in China. On the website of the Global Times (www.huanqiu.com) such examples are found, one user wrote "Get the hell out" while another one wrote "Ha ha, I'm going to buy firecrackers to celebrate!".

According to Isaac Mao
Isaac Mao
Isaac Mao is a venture capitalist, software architect, and student researcher from the People's Republic of China, known for co-founding of CNBlog.org and for his research in social learning...

, a high profile Chinese Internet expert, maybe 90% of Internet users in China
Internet in the People's Republic of China
The first connection of the mainland of the People's Republic of China with the Internet was established on between ICA Beijing and Karlsruhe University in Germany, under the leadership of Prof. Werner Zorn and Prof. Wang Yunfeng. Since then the Internet in China has grown to host the largest base...

 don't care whether Google leaves or not. For Chinese users who strongly support Google's stay in China without censorship (or leaving China to keep its neutrality and independence), some are accustomed to use circumvention technology to access blocked websites.

See also

  • Censorship by Google
  • Illegal flower tribute
    Illegal flower tribute
    "Illegal flower tribute" is an Internet meme that emerged after Google's announcement of a possible exit from Mainland China in January 2010. On , Google posted an article on its official Blogspot blog, entitled "A New Approach to China", in which it disclosed its decision to end compliance with...

  • Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
    Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
    Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. There are no specific laws or regulations which the censorship follows...

  • Chinese Intelligence Operations in the United States
    Chinese intelligence operations in the United States
    The People's Republic of China has and is currently using a widespread effort to acquire U.S. military technology and classified information. To fulfill its long-term military development goals, the PRC uses a variety of methods to obtain U.S. technology; including espionage, the exploitation of...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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