AFTER WEEKS of wondering whether Google would stay or go, the web giant now looks set to carry out its threat to close its China website, google.cn, over web censorship by the end of this month.
Growing signs that Google is on the way out of the world’s biggest internet market have prompted a series of angry broadsides in the Chinese state media, accusing the US web giant of politicising the censorship dispute.
Google caused a major stir in January when it said it no longer wished to be part of Beijing’s internet censorship, with some internet users placing flowers outside the company’s Beijing headquarters.
The decision was also an uncomfortable one as it served as a reminder that many Western companies have chosen to compromise their principles on free speech and censorship in order to cash in on the burgeoning China market.
However, since then there has been little more than speculation and murmurings about whether it would make good on its threat.
The Beijing government is keen to foster the business and trade applications of the internet, but regularly embarks on crackdowns on pornographic material or items that are deemed subversive.
This is a broad group that includes blogs by human rights activists or foreign pro-democracy groups, as well as organisations representing Tibetan or Uighur rights. It also means that social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as online video site YouTube, are banned in China.
Some tech-savvy Chinese use virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxy servers to get around the restrictions, but they are a negligible part of the market.
Negotiations took place, and for a while it looked like Google might stay, but in recent weeks there has been a hardening of China’s line.