Is Google Leaving China April 10?

Posted by Michael Michelini on Mar 20 2010

Man……Seems the news is all over the place, and google.cn may be turning off as early as mid april.
What will this mean for all those workers? The google workforce is probably one of the top of the line workers, so I am sure Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, and all the other Chinese internet companies will be scrambling to grab as many as they can.

Will Google Leave China On April 10th Forever?

Mar 19, 2010 at 8:54am ET by Barry Schwartz

Bloomberg News reports Google may be pulling out of China as soon as April 10th. Bloomberg then later added that if they do pull out, it will likely be “permanent.”

Bloomberg News references reports from the China Business News paper, where they said Google will likely announce their plans to pull out officially on March 22, this Monday. In that announcement, it is expected that Google will say they will be completely out by April 10th.

Peter Lui, formerly Google’s financial controller for the Asia Pacific region, said that if they do pull out, “there is no way Google can ever come back.” He said it would be a “burnt bridge” that could never be repaired.

So then the question is….If google is GONE FOREVER for this HUGE massive Chinese market…doesn’t that mean OPPORTUNITY for all the other internet companies? Sure, Baidu (currently 70% or so of the Chinese search market) will grow to be close to 100% after google.cn is gone, but I am sure people will want some other choices besides 1 massive government influenced internet search engine company….

So keep in mind, every situation has its positives, and its negatives. Other chinese companies will hire the top google.cn staff, the google technology will move to other chinese companies, and life will go on.

And then in 100 years, google won’t be the only internet company left! As it will not be in China, amazing!!!

http://www.blahniknet.com Andy Blahnik

Lets hope they don’t leave, that would suck. At least they would still be in Hong Kong
http://blog.michaelmichelini.com mike

there is so much news about it, and I guess I’m adding to the hype….but really what does this mean? I think it means google.cn will be gone. The government won’t block google.com (i dont think they are that crazy) and still a lot of the tools will be there, like gmail and others…

so for english speaking people, it doesn’t really have an effect….

also, I dont see you on skype man! you coming to shenzhen tonight?
http://www.ikeeptrying.cn ikeeptrying

I dont think they will give up such a big cake!
http://blog.michaelmichelini.com mike

@ikeeptrying – mmmm, seems they have gone off the cliff…

but while google.cn may be gone – google.com still works in the chinese language, right??? i mean, they aren’t going to delete chinese characters out of their main search engine……
Piotr

so it looks like google is not leaving china. it looks like google is turning of censorship, and waiting till china kicks it out. if/when will that happen?
http://blog.michaelmichelini.com mike

yes, the left…..the redirected to HONG KONG –

now China can block it, as that it outside of China…

so as far as I’m concerned. today is the day Google left China

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American ecommerce guy, I've been living in South China - Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Dongguan (+ a touch of Philippines) since end of 2007.

Successfully selling online since 2004, took it fulltime early 2007. Love international business & connecting, and working on ways to give hard working people global opportunities. (Read More...)