Monday, September 06, 2010

FT.com / Technology - Google warned on China plans

“People have to evaluate […] how flexible they are with their policies” – a doing-business-in-China reality check from Apple, Microsoft, and Google alumnus Kai-Fu Lee

His remarks come after Google saw its market share in China slide following a radical change in its approach to the country over the past eight months. “People have to evaluate their overall equation, their level of discomfort with this country, their belief they can be successful, how lucrative the market is, how flexible they are with their policies, how much money they have,” Mr Lee said. “They have to balance all those things. Clearly, today, those stars are not aligned.”

Mr Lee declined to comment on Google’s stand-off with the Chinese government and its prospects in China. Under Mr Lee, Google built a local search service in China, accepting it had to self-censor search results as required by Beijing. But following increasingly extensive censorship demands from the Chinese government over the past two years, the company started questioning that model.

FT.com / Technology - Google warned on China plans

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