Google’s Threat to Leave China: Bold Move Despite Small Market Share
by Rosemary Lising ~ January 14th, 2010
The New York Times reported Tuesday that Google has stated it would stop cooperating with Chinese Internet censorship and consider shutting down its operations in the country altogether, citing assaults from hackers on its computer systems and China’s attempts to “limit free speech on the Web.”
This stance taken by Google is a bold move.
Google has been in China since around 2006. China has always been a challenge to penetrate for Google. Unlike the U.S. and U.K. and many other parts of the world, Google only reaches about 30% of the Chinese market; in China, Baidu is the dominant player. All indications were that business from Google was moving forward in China, all be it perhaps more slowly.
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Search engine marketing is one of the marketing activities, which in most cases, is relatively easy to expand to other markets. Marketing in Europe is one of those cases where it’s not so easy. Why not, you ask? The answer is because there is no Europe when applying any type of marketing strategy.
Recently it has become fashionable in technical circles to parrot the line that Google is facing a grave crisis. “They can’t do real-time or social search”, the argument goes: faced with obsolescence, “they‘ll have no choice but to buy Twitter” cry the doom-mongers. Of course if we look at the reasons often given to explain Google’s imminent demise, it soon becomes clear that nothing is clear except that Google is unlikely to wave the white flag any time soon.