Google China denies move to Shanghai

• Source: Global Times
• [09:16 September 08 2010]
• Comments

By Tang Zhao

Google China Tuesday denied widespread speculation among Chinese Internet users that the search engine giant will relocate its Beijing office to Shanghai and re-launch its search service on the Chinese mainland.

"The information published online is inaccurate," Zhao Wei, a public relations officer from Google China, told the Global Times Tuesday. "There is no current plan for Google China to relocate our Beijing office to Shanghai."

Tuesday, a report by Chinese portal qq.com quoted an anonymous former employee of Google China as saying that Liu Yun, vice president of Google and chief of sales and operations in China, has already made the move from Beijing to Shanghai.

Rumors regarding Liu's move have circulated online for the past month, stoking the idea that it might signal a relocation of Google China's headquarters from Beijing to the company's Shanghai offices.

Zhao added that currently there are no plans to end the practice of redirecting users of its search service at google.cn to google.com.hk. He declined to comment on the future of services that are currently available on the .cn domain, including music and shopping search and a translation function.

Google.cn, which catered to users from the Chinese mainland, was shut down on March 23, with visitors to the domain being automatically redirected to Google's Hong Kong-based service. After authorities said that the redirection did not comply with local regulations and policies, Google created a page at google.cn at the end of June, allowing users to click through to google.com.hk.

"We will keep the existing dual-system that uses both google.cn and google.com.hk to provide different services to our users," Zhao said. "We will inform the public if there are new services available on google.cn."

According to figures from iResearch, although Google still ranks second in the Chinese search market, its market share decreased from 33 percent in the first quarter in 2009 to 27.3 percent by the second quarter of 2010. Market leader Baidu.com saw its market share increase from 62.3 percent to 70.8 percent over the same period.