Product Code Database
Google China is a subsidiary of Google. Once a popular search engine, most services offered by Google China were blocked by the Great Firewall in the China. In 2010, searching via all Google search sites, including Google Mobile, was moved from mainland China to Hong Kong.
By November 2013, Google's search market share in China had declined to 1.7% from its August 2009 level of 36.2%, though it has slowly risen since, representing 3.8% of the search engine market by July 2020. Microsoft blocks censorship of Skype in China: advocacy group. NBC News.com. Retrieved on 29 November 2013.
On 10 September 2004, Google.com launched Simplified Chinese Google News.
In 2005, Google China moved from Xinhua Insurance Building, outside Jianguomen, to Keji Building in the Zhongguancun near the east gate of Tsinghua University, where Google rented two floors. In addition, Google has an office in the Beijing Fortune Center.
On 19 July 2005, Kai-Fu Lee, a former Microsoft executive and the founder in 1998 of Microsoft Research Asia, joined Google and officially became the president of Google China. On the same day, Google announced that it would set up a research and development center in China.
On 26 January 2006, Google launched its China-based google.cn search page, with results subject to censorship by the Chinese government. Google used its Chinese name, GǔGē ("harvest song"), but it never caught on with Chinese internet users.
On 12 April 2006, Google's Global CEO Eric Schmidt announced Google's Chinese name as " 谷歌" (The Chinese character version of GǔGē) in Beijing. Google officially entered the Chinese mainland market.
From September 2006 until August 2016, the office of Google China was a ten-floor building in Kejian Building in the Tsinghua Science Park.
In March 2009, China blocked access to Google's YouTube site due to footage showing Chinese security forces beating Tibetan people; access to other Google online services was being denied to users arbitrarily.
On 4 September 2009, after four years leading Google China, Kai-Fu Lee unexpectedly left to start a venture fund, amid debate about the Chinese government's censorship policies and Google's decreasing share to rival Baidu and Sogou.
On 30 March 2010, searching via all Google search sites in all languages was banned in mainland China; any attempt to search using Google resulted in a DNS error. Initial reports suggested that the error was caused by a banned string (RFA, as in "Radio Free Asia") being automatically added to Google search queries upstream of user queries, with prominent China journalists disagreeing over whether the blockage was an intentional and high-level attempt to censor search results. Other Google services such as Google Mail and Google Maps 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 next day.
On 30 June 2010, Google ended the automatic redirect of Google China to Google Hong Kong, and instead placed a link to Google Hong Kong to avoid their ICP license being revoked.
The fact that Google had ended some of its services in China, and the reasons for it, were censored in China.
In 2013 Google stopped displaying warning messages that had shown up for mainland Chinese users who were attempting to search for politically sensitive phrases.
Google's Internet mail service, Gmail, and Chrome, Google-based search inquiries, along with most Google services except those provided by google.cn,such as Google maps and translate (which has already been closed by Google in 2019 and 2022), has been blocked in mainland China since 27 May 2014.The ban was briefly lifted on the evening of 10 July 2014, but was blocked again in the early morning hours of the next day. 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 8 December 2016, Google held the Google Developer Day China 2016 in the China National Convention Center, and announced the creation of a developer website for mainland Chinese developers, including Google Developers China (
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On 31 August 2017, Google China announced TensorFlow China (
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In May 2017, Google China held Future of Go Summit with the Chinese government.
On 13 December 2017, Google China held Google Developer Day China 2017 in Shanghai and announced the establishment of the Google AI China Center, led by Fei-Fei Li and Professor Li Jia.
On 14 August 2020, following the enactment of the Hong Kong national security law, Google China stated that it would no longer directly respond to data requests from the Hong Kong authorities, and would instead have them go through a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with the United States.
Despite statements from Google executives that their work had been "exploratory", "in early stages" and that Google was "not close to launching a search product in China", on 21 September 2018 The Intercept reported the existence of an internal memo authored by a Google engineer that revealed details about the project. The memo reportedly said that a prototype of the censored search engine was being developed as an app called Maotai that would record the geographical position and internet history of its users, and accused Google of developing "spying tools" for the Chinese government to monitor its citizens.
In December 2018, The Intercept reported that the Dragonfly project had "effectively been shut down" after a clash within Google, led by members of the company's privacy team.
The competitors of Google China include Bing Search, Sogou and Baidu, often called the "Google of China" because of its resemblance and similarity to Google. In August 2008, Google China launched a music download service, Google Music. "Google offers free music downloads in China", The Guardian, Wednesday, 6 August 2008. In 2010, Google China had a market share in China of 29% according to Analysys International. By October 2012, that number was down to 5%. It further declined to 1.7% in 2013.
Since announcing its intent to comply with Internet censorship laws in China, Google China had been the focus of controversy over what critics view as capitulation to the "Golden Shield Project". 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 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" were blocked entirely, with only the message, "Search results may not comply with the relevant laws, regulations and policy, and cannot 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.BBC News " Google censors itself for China." 25 January 2006
A US PBS 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. "Google's China Problem (and China's Google Problem)", New York Times, 23 April 2006.
In June 2006 Google co-founder Sergey Brin was quoted as saying that 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".Cohn, William A. (2 – Autumn/2007) Yahoo's China Defense. "The New Presence."
On 9 April 2007, Google China spokesman Cui Jin admitted that the pinyin Google Input Method Editor (IME) "was built leveraging some non-Google database resources". This was in response to a request on 6 April from the Chinese search engine company Sohu that Google stop distributing its pinyin IME software because it allegedly copied portions from Sohu's own software.
In early 2008 Guo Quan, 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.Times Online. "Dissident Chinese professor to sue Yahoo! and Google for erasing his name", 6 February 2008
On 13 January 2010, the news agency AHN reported that the U.S. Congress planned 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 and the free and unfree Internet.U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "Remarks on Internet Freedom", at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., 21 March 2010. Chinese articles came back saying that the United States uses the internet as a means to create worldwide hegemony based on Western values.Lexis The issue of Google's changed policy toward China was cited as a potentially major development in world affairs, marking a split between authoritarian socialism and the Western model of free capitalism and Internet access.
The Chinese government since made numerous standard and general statements on the matter, but took no real action. 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 other reasons. At the time Baidu was the market leader in China with about 60% of the market compared to Google's 31%, Yahoo placing third with less than 10%. The Chinese People's Daily newspaper published an op-ed on Google which criticized western leaders for politicizing the way in which China controls citizens' 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. ..."
While Jiang Yu, a spokesperson of China's Foreign Ministry, promoted the Chinese government's "development of the internet", Wang Chen of China's State Council Information Office defended online censorship: "Maintaining the safe operation of the Internet and the secure flow of information is a fundamental requirement for guaranteeing state security and people's fundamental interests, promoting economic development and cultural prosperity and maintaining a harmonious and stable society."
According to Joseph Cheng, a professor of political science from City University of Hong Kong, the ruling Chinese Communist Party was deploying Chinese nationalism to stifle debate about censorship in 2010. By criticizing cultural export (in this case, the localization of Google in China), it provided defense to justify the Chinese authorities' censorship control. The Chinese authorities were accused of steering state-run media to bundle Google together with other disputes with United States that had been stirring nationalist rancour in China at the time. On the state-run tabloid Global Times 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!"
Isaac Mao, a prominent Chinese internet expert, speculated that 90% of Internet users in China did not care whether Google was leaving or not. Among Chinese users who strongly supported Google remaining in China without censorship (or leaving China to keep its neutrality and independence), many were accustomed to using circumvention technology to access blocked websites.
Despite being blocked in China, the simplified Chinese version of Google services are still present, as per the case of most Western websites being blocked in China.
As the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre approached, Chinese authorities blocked more websites and search engines. GreatFire said that the block was far-reaching, and that Google simply wasn't working. "The block is indiscriminate as all Google services in all countries, encrypted or not, are now blocked in China. This blockage includes Google search, images, Gmail and almost all other products. In addition, the block covers Google Hong Kong, google.com, and all other country specific versions, e.g., Google Japan. It is the tightest censorship ever deployed." The company began to redirect search results from mainland China to its Hong Kong website, which led the Chinese authorities to block the Hong Kong site by making users wait 90 seconds for banned results.
In 2009, one-third of all searches in China were on Google. , the US company had only 1.7% market share.
In 2017, a glitch allowed access to Google which was soon blocked again.
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