Forbes: Google can not leave China

Published on February 2 2010 by Will Lee

Beijing time, 22nd of Jan., the "Forbes" article pointed out that if Google drop out of the Chinese market, then it would be wrong.

Google earlier of this week announced it would postpone release two Android phones in China. Google last week claimed that in December it suffered attacks from China and threatened that it would withdraw from the Chinese market.

Google is really ready to leave China? If it really do so, it would lose a lot. We know, Google is still negotiating with the Chinese Government, which indicates that Google believes that Chinese customers with a very high value.

Just look at the history of the Internet in the United States can understand why Google is intense interest in China. Since the Internet in the mid-nineties of the last century becomes the mainstream, it has been rapidly developed. In contrast, the application of new technologies in developing countries also in a faster rate. For example, the China Internet Network Information Center, the latest survey shows that the number of Chinese netizens reached 384 million people in 2009 compared with 2008 increased by 28%. However, Google must take into account the fact that China's total population of over 1.3 billion people, which means that in future the number of Internet users in China will continue to grow rapidly.

Google really needs China. China will in the near future, take a large share of the Internet, Google can not ignore that more than 10 million potential users. Currently, Google's share in the Chinese market is about 33%, Baidu is the market leader. Taking into account the high base of Internet users in China, Baidu is bound to catch up with and even go beyond Google to become the world's largest search engine. To seize the Chinese netizens can help Google maintain its global search engine market leading position and allow it to continue to invest in innovative projects and to help the U.S. maintain its technical and business aspects of leadership.

More importantly, Google and the Chinese Government will also lead to tension between the developments of the Internet in cross-border due to differences in regulations in question can not be carried out smoothly. The Internet from the United States, but with an increasing number of emerging economies with a large number of users to join in, the Internet will gradually become the country's largest source of income. Even if many governments may be caused by an international organization to maintain law and order in the Internet would certainly have difficulties. At least for now, the enterprise must make a political statement or to make a choice on the pursuit of profit.