Google reportedly to part ways with China on April 10

April 10: General Robert E. Lee's last address to Confederate troops, the Titanic's departure from Southampton, England, my friend Jake's birthday, and now, Google's rumored pull-out date in China. The company is preparing to announce its decision as soon as March 22, according to an anonymous source speaking to the China Business News, though it likely won't be the end of the company's operations in the region.

The newspaper's source, quoted by Bloomberg, said that Google's Chinese staff will find out what their options are on March 22 as well. Previously, Google had told them that they could either move to the US to work at Google's headquarters or that they could work for Google's Asia-Pacific business.

Chinese officials have been warning Google's partners to continue censoring search results in the event that the company decides to either open the floodgates on taboo topics or pull out altogether. Though some believe Google has already begun to let some results leak through, it seems as if the official decision has not yet been made.

Google will continue its Asia-Pacific operations, even if Google.cn ends up going away.

Source: Arstechnica.com

China warns Google partners as censored results leak through

Google's partners are getting a stern warning from Chinese authorities over Google's decision to ditch censorship in the country, which some believe has already begun. An "industry expert" speaking anonymously to the New York Times said that a notice went out to Google's biggest online partners on Friday, telling them to be prepared to continue censoring search results no matter what Google does.

As we covered on Friday, Google is on the verge of either ending its censorship of search results or pulling its business out of China, although insiders say that Google is trying to work out an agreement with a handful of agencies so it doesn't have to leave altogether. China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology, however, has made it clear that if the company doesn't respect Chinese laws with regards to censorship, "the consequences will be on you."

According to the Times, the government's warning to Google's partners is primarily meant to avoid confusion if China is forced to flip the switch on the Great Firewall to block Google's results. Like other parts of the world, there are numerous Chinese portals that use Google-powered search boxes on their sites, and readers might be a little more frustrated when it's not just Google.cn that's being blocked, but also sina.com.cn or ganji.com. Implementing a last-minute switch to another search service could be difficult for those sites, though, so it seems reasonable to expect that there will be some downtime for one and all.

According to some, however, Decision Day has already arrived: Silicon Alley Insider notes that Beijing resident Bill Bishop is already pulling up uncensored results for the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, which were previously blocked within China. Other taboo subjects remain inaccessible, however, meaning that the Tiananmen Square results are either a bug or evidence of Google testing the waters before going whole hog. Given the company's commitment to standing by its original word, we're going to guess the latter.

Source: Arstechnica.com

China and Google playing game of Chicken over censorship

Chinese authorities are pounding their desks over compliance with the law as Google's C-Day approaches. The "C" is for Censorship, of course, which Google plans to lift in China sometime in the near future. The company has been in talks with China ever since the highly publicized hack earlier this year, and although the two may not be in agreement over what to censor, it seems likely that Google will keep at least some of its business in China.

"Google has made its case, both publicly and privately," China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong told the press on Friday when questioned about censorship, according to Reuters. "If you don't respect Chinese laws, you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and the consequences will be on you."

Translation: in this game of chicken, the Chinese government won't be the one to budge. Meanwhile, a person "familiar with the talks" told the Wall Street Journal that the company isn't likely to pull out of China altogether if this censorship experiment goes sour. Google is apparently putting together a "patchwork agreement" with a number of different Chinese agencies so that it can continue operating to some degree in China.

One thing's for sure: the status quo won't hold. The WSJ's source claims a decision will come within weeks, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt indicated at a press conference in Abu Dhabi that "something will happen soon."

If Google opens the floodgates on previously censored topics like the Dalai Lama or the Tiananmen Square protests, there's little stopping China from taking measures to block the site like it already does with numerous others. There are plenty of workarounds for crafty Internet users, but we wouldn't be surprised to see this happen if China and Google are unable to come to an agreement.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Chinese scientists worry about Google pullout

Google's threat to pull out of China may have been met with a shrug in some circles, but there's a population of Chineses citizens who appear to be genuinely worried about the prospect: scientists. Nature conducted an informal survey of Chinese researchers, and got nearly 800 responses. Well over 90 percent of those who responded say they use Google for searches, and 48 percent felt that the loss of Google would create a significant problem for their research.

There are a number of reasons for the scientists' attachment to Google. Although Baidu has done well by tailoring its search service to the sites frequented by the Chinese public, science has remained a field where most of the top research takes place in English. As such, Google's massive index of English-language material, especially works that have found their way into Google Scholar, provide the company's search offerings with distinct advantages. In fact, Google Search and Scholar were the services most often used by the respondents (Maps and Mail were also heavily used).

There are specialized scientific search services, such as the PubMed index, but these don't offer the same level of sophistication as Google. They also don't bring in a broad set of additional materials from outside the realm of academic publishing, such as faculty webpages and the sites of scholarly organizations. Although searching for papers accounted for the largest use of Google cited (at 82 percent of respondents), basic science news and information about other labs were cited by 57 percent, accessing databases by 46, and searches for conferences and meetings by 40 percent.

To be sure, some of those polled didn't feel that Google offered anything special—one told Nature that "It doesn’t matter whether we have Google for science—we have PubMed." But others were equally adamant that the company provides an essential service for researchers (one compared its loss to going blind), and the numbers seem to suggest this group is in the majority. Chinese scholars are increasingly engaged in the international scientific community, training, working, and publishing abroad with regularity. As such, they need access to services that provide full access to that community; the loss of Google would apparently limit their options when it comes to those services.

Source: Arstechnica.com