Society
Going, going ... gone
By Yan Jie (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-25 07:35
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BEIJING - Google users had a mixed reaction to the announced departure of the search giant from the Chinese mainland.
On Wednesday, Google's search services remained erratic across Beijing, frustrating users unsure about the future of its other services - from maps to music - more than two months after its announcement it may quit the mainland.
While Google is the world's top search engine, it held only an estimated 30 percent share of the mainland's search market in 2009, compared with home-grown rival Baidu Inc's 60 percent.
Some Web users said Google Inc's move did not mean a loss for them because they usually use other tools instead of Google's search service.
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"I do feel that Google has overacted," said Lei Zhengmeng, a postgraduate student at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Other netizens thought the absence of Google's search service would affect to their work as professionals.
William Long, an IT industry insider and an active blogger, said Google's exit from the mainland made him feel sad.
Some also said the company's decision would hurt itself as it would leave more room for other online search engines to develop. They believed that a search engine equal to or even superior to Google Inc's would emerge sooner or later.
Google has already been taken off the popular tom.com portal, owned by Li Ka-shing, a Hong Kong billionaire, Bloomberg said on Wednesday.
Many in Google's often well-educated, professional fan-base in China, who use the company's software for both work and play, said they were already suffering some fallout on Wednesday with erratic service.
Several of Google's international search sites were failing to open, and when they could be accessed some users found that all searches, including for non-sensitive terms like "hello", were returning blank pages or error messages.
Businesses, university students and people in private homes reported intermittent problems on the main Google.com site, Google.co.uk and Google.ca.
"Google.com.hk is not currently being blocked, although it seems that some sensitive terms are. However, if you search for a sensitive term and trigger a government block, that may affect subsequent searches ... for a short period," Google said.
Google.cn, the mainland-based domain, is still offering online services such as map, shopping, customized Web pages, financial information service and translation.
The Chinese-language site also reserves its search services for music, video and blogs.
Xing Yu, Tan Zongyang and Reuters contributed to this story.
