Google Almost Certain To Pull Search Engine From China
The Financial Times said on Saturday that Google’s talks with China over censorship have reached an apparent impasse, and the Internet company is now "99.9 percent" certain it will shut down its Chinese search engine.
Google said that it had drawn up detailed plans for closing its Chinese search engine.
According to the paper’s source, Google was likely to take some time to follow through with its plans.
The newspaper reported that it would be to help bring about an orderly closure as the company takes a step to protect local employees from retaliation by authorities.
China warned Google on Friday not to flout the country’s laws as expectations grow for a resolution to a public battle over censorship and cyber-security.
When Google threatened to pull out of China if it could not offer an unfiltered Chinese search engine in January, the business and political circles were baffled. Google’s threat came after cyber attacks on the company were found to originate from China.
"If you don’t respect Chinese laws, you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and the consequences will be on you," China’s Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Li Yizhong, told Reuters on Friday in answer to a question on what China would do if Google.cn simply stopped filtering search results.
Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, said on Wednesday that he hoped to announce a result soon after talks with Chinese authorities on offering an uncensored search engine in China.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shares an oversight of the Chinese Internet, along with a number of other bodies. More bureaucracies are still involved in matters of foreign investment, complicating the Chinese government’s response to Google’s challenge.
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