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Google quit China in 2010 over concerns on governmental censorship
Google is preparing to relaunch in China, eight years after it quit the country in response to censorship demands imposed by the government.
According to news site The Intercept, Google has drawn up plans to launch a mobile based search engine in China.
In 2010, Google pulled out of the Chinese market in response to the Chinese government’s inisitance on censoring content its citizens are able to view. At the time, Google felt this was a bridge too far for the company and said that it was unwilling to comply with the state sponsored censorship.
However, the company now appears ready to swallow its pride and cash in on China’s massive, lucrative market.
A raft of western internet sites and services are blocked in China, including Google, Facebook and Watsapp. China’s biggest search engine, Baidu, effectively filters out content that is deemed politically sensitive.
According to documents seen by The Intercept, state that the new Google search service will filter out websites that are blocked by China’s "Great Firewall", as well as black listing certain search terms for banned or illicit content, for which no results will be returned.
The documents cited by The Intercept stated that websites that could be expected to have their content censored included the BBC news site and Wikipaedia.
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