At the beginning of this year Google accused the Chinese government of attempting to gain access to some users’ e-mail accounts. The government threatened to cancel Google’s license to operate in China. Google placed a re-direct that sent users to a landing page in China where they could then select the Hong Kong servers.
While this was happening Google was losing market share to China’s home-grown search engine Baidu. Now new competitors are appearing in the search market. Alibaba has Etao coming along. China Mobile and Xinhua will launch another search engine.
Google has canceled contracts with seven advertising resellers. The resellers are seeking compensation from Google for the canceled contracts because they signed two-year deals last December.
Investor Place reports Google has around 24% of the Chinese search market, compared with around 70% for Baidu. In the first quarter of 2010, Google had 30% of the search market.
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