China stands firm on Internet security amid Google drama
- Source: Xinhua
- [08:45 January 15 2010]
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In a series of national anti-online porn campaigns last year, Google acted quickly in cleaning up pornographic searching results on Google.cn, upon requests from the Chinese authorities.
The experts argued that Internet regulation was a common practice in most countries.
Liu Deliang, head of the Beijing-based Asia-Pacific Institute for Cyber-law Studies, said both China and the United States had laws and regulations on Internet but only in different ways.
"The US government only wants to keep children away from porn, while the Chinese government wants nobody to have access to porn," Liu said.
Google appeared to have followed government rules in its own country. In March 2008, Google reportedly removed the images of US military bases from its mapping service upon orders from the US government.
"US authorities also have information classified and filtered via technical methods, and they have regulations on media contents and operation too," said Yao Huanqing, associate professor from Law School of Renming University of China.
While many Internet users in China were dismayed by Google's announcement, some suspected if Google's latest move was made out of concerns of economic benefits and market share.
A blogger named Sarah Lacy said in a post on techcrunch.com that Google's business was not doing well in China, quoting Google China's former head Kai-fu Lee as saying the company was never going to substantially increase its market share or beat Baidu.
"Google has clearly decided doing business in China isn't worth it, and is turning what would be a negative into a marketing positive for its business in the rest of the world," the blogger said.
Liu Dan, a researcher with a Beijing-based consulting company affiliated to the China Center for Information Industry Development, said Google's strategy of localizing and marketing was not as good as its technology.
According to the iResearch Consulting Group, the Chinese search engine market reached nearly seven billion yuan (about one billion US dollars) in 2009, and Google took 32.8 percent in Q3 revenues while China's Baidu claimed 63.8 percent.
"It should be a business decision for a company to quit an overseas market or not, but now the Google case has been overstated," Sun Zhe said.
"As China has a quite relaxed environment now, its principle on Internet security is impossible to change. The choice is only leftto Google," he said.
