Google China is a subsidiary of Google. Once a popular search engine, most services offered by Google China were blocked by the Great Firewall in the People's Republic of China. In 2010, searching via all Google search sites, including Google Mobile, was moved from mainland China to Hong Kong.
By November 2013, Google's search market share in China had declined to 1.7% from its August 2009 level of 36.2%, though it has slowly risen since, representing 3.8% of the search engine market by July 2020.
History
2000–2006: Launch of search service
On 12 September 2000, Google announced the addition of Simplified and Traditional Chinese versions to Google.com and began to provide search services for Chinese users worldwide.
On 10 September 2004, Google.com launched Simplified Chinese Google News.
In 2005, Google China moved from Xinhua Insurance Building, outside Jianguomen, to Keji Building in the Tsinghua Science Park near the east gate of Tsinghua University, where Google rented two floors. In addition, Google has an office in the Beijing Fortune Center.
On 19 July 2005, Kai-Fu Lee, a former Microsoft executive and the founder in 1998 of Microsoft Research Asia, joined Google and officially became the president of Google China. On the same day, Google announced that it would set up a research and development center in China.
2006–2009: Censorship of Google
In January 2006, Simplified Chinese Google News was renamed from "Google 新闻" (Google News) to "Google 资讯" (Google Information).
On 26 January 2006, Google launched its China-based google.cn search page, with results subject to censorship by the Chinese government. Google used its Chinese name, GǔGē ("harvest song"), but it never caught on with Chinese internet users.
On 12 April 2006, Google's Global CEO Eric Schmidt announced Google's Chinese name as "谷歌" (The Chinese character version of GǔGē) in Beijing. Google officially entered the Chinese mainland market.
From September 2006 until August 2016, the office of Google China was a ten-floor building in Kejian Building in the Tsinghua Science Park.
In March 2009, China blocked access to Google's YouTube site due to footage showing Chinese security forces beating Tibetans; access to other Google online services was being denied to users arbitrarily.
On 4 September 2009, after four years leading Google China, Kai-Fu Lee unexpectedly left to start a venture fund, amid debate about the Chinese government's censorship policies and Google's decreasing share to rival Baidu and Sogou.
2010–2016: Giving up search service
In January 2010, Google announced that, in response to a Chinese-originated hacking attack on them and other US tech companies, they were no longer willing to censor searches in China and would pull out of the country completely if necessary. At the same time, Google started to redirect all search queries from Google.cn to Google.com.hk in Hong Kong, which returned results without censorship. At the time, Hong Kong was vested with independent judicial power and was not subject to most Chinese laws, including those requiring the restriction of free flow of information and censorship of Internet traffic. David Drummond, senior vice president of Google, stated in the official Google blog that the circumstances surrounding censorship of the Internet in China led Google to move its search to Hong Kong, the absence of censorship making it more effective for networking and sharing information with Internet users in mainland China.
On 30 March 2010, searching via all Google search sites in all languages was banned in mainland China; any attempt to search using Google resulted in a DNS error. Initial reports suggested that the error was caused by a banned string (RFA, as in "Radio Free Asia") being automatically added to Google search queries upstream of user queries, with prominent China journalists disagreeing over whether the blockage was an intentional and high-level attempt to censor search results. Other Google services such as Google Mail and Google Maps appeared to be unaffected. Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at UC Berkeley and founder of the China Digital Times, noted that the ban in mainland China could eventually block all access to Google sites and applications if the Chinese government wanted. The ban was lifted the next day.
On 30 June 2010, Google ended the automatic redirect of Google China to Google Hong Kong, and instead placed a link to Google Hong Kong to avoid their Internet Content Provider (ICP) license being revoked.
The fact that Google had ended some of its services in China, and the reasons for it, were censored in China.