Sina Ends Google Search-Engine Deal for China Online Users
Sina Corp., owner of China’s third- most-visited website, dropped Google Inc. (GOOG)’s search engine a year after the U.S. company moved its Chinese service offshore to avoid local censorship rules.
Sina stopped using Google’s search service after the expiry of a contract, Liu Qi, a spokesman at Chinese Web portal operator, said in an e-mail today. The Shanghai-based company will instead use its own proprietary technology, he said.
The move comes a week after Google said China blocked its Gmail service, a claim China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman described as “unacceptable.” The government, which bans pornography, gambling and content critical of the ruling Communist Party, blocks Google’s YouTube site as well as social- networking websites run by Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc.
Sina, which has said since last year that it may replace the U.S. company’s service, follows billionaire Li Ka-shing’s Tom Online Inc. in dropping Google as a partner in the world’s biggest Internet market by users.
In March 2010, Google redirected its Google.cn service in China to a site in Hong Kong after saying it would no longer comply with Chinese government requirements to self-censor Web queries.
Google still needed to offer censored search services to some partners to meet existing obligations, though they would be phased out, spokeswoman Jessica Powell said in March 2010.
“Over time, we would not be syndicating censored search to partners in China after fulfilling our contractual commitments,” Google said in an e-mailed reply to questions today, without commenting on the agreement with Sina.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Lee in Hong Kong at wlee37@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net.
Rate this Page