Google told to heed China warning

On Friday, the Chinese Government issued a formal warning to Google, saying the search engine will be shut down if it continues to allow access to foreign sites, a move that reflects the authorities’ efforts to crack down on online pornography.

“Pornography is a legitimate concern for China and if you take a step back you’ll see this move is part of the broader attempt by Chinese Government’s campaign to limit pornography and other contraband material,” said David Wolf, CEO of Wolf Group Asia.

“They’re going after Google because they can’t go after their own search engines without going to the big boy first. Google may be number two in China but it’s number one in the world, and going after Google sends a strong message.”

The charge, which cites Google with providing “obscene” content to Chinese netizens, is in clear succession of the Government’s Green Dam edict stating that every computer sold in the country must include censorship software to block pornography.

The news reached Google at a time when it has shown especially strong performance in the country, gaining a reported 30 per cent market share. While it still trails clear search leader Baidu, which claims approximately 65 per cent share, Google has made inroads through programmes specifically developed to raise its profile in the market, including the launch of a free music search service.

However, Wolf said the issue Google faces is not one of domestic-versus-foreign, as seen in the past. This is a stance against low-brow content on a whole, and local players, including Baidu, are more certainly going to be targeted next.

While Jiao Jie, a senior analyst at BDA China Limited, agrees this is a clear warning sign for Baidu and other local search players, she thinks Google has been targeted because of its skew toward foreign searches, which are more likely to provide illegal content.

In response to the action, Google’s headquarters officially said it will make a concerted effort to eliminate undesirable search results and will work with the Government to remain in operation.

Wolf adds that, in the end, Google may still be able to continue operations as before. “I think Google is going to take a look and say ‘We’ve been through all this both in China and elsewhere before,’ and if Google has said elsewhere ‘you can’t blame us because we’re just the search engine’ it’ll turn around to China and still say, ‘you can’t blame us because we’re just the search engine’.”