After Google threatened China that it would pull out after China’s cyber attacks on the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, the media world has now been waiting for a reaction from China.
The response arrived on Bloomberg who announced that Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu had stated that it encourages the development of an open Internet and China welcomes international enterprises to operate Internet services “in accordance with the law”.
Separate to this, Wang Chen director of the State Council Information Office said in a question-and-answer session with reporters; a transcript of which was posted on the office's Web site today, that Wang's remarks suggest China will not grant Google's request to allow unfiltered Internet searches, which is something that Google are openly requesting that China allow them or else it may mean that they would have to ‘close down the Google.cn and potentially their offices in China’.
So what does this mean for Google.cn? Well, it would seem that the superpower are not likely to budge on Google’s threats. As the Chinese government holds the power in the country, it is up to them on how it is governed and with the fact that Google only owns 31% of the market share compared to it competitor search engine Bidau, which own 60%, I would think that Google have got a lot more to lose then the Chinese Government. This would mean that Google would need to get their negotiating hat on to see if they can salvage some sort of agreement from this.