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Invite colleagues
Google threatened to pull out of its operations in China after it said it had uncovered a massive cyber attack on its computers that originated here in China. The details of this cyber attack made public via a blog post, will certainly win no friends in Beijing (with the Government) and represents a longer term issue between the company and Chinese Government.
If Google is no longer in China will that have a major impact on the Search Marketing companies? I considered this in the light of the new Chinese search engines coming into the market and the apparent lack of traction for Google in China.
So lets just step back and think about what would happen in Google.cn was to close and turn off the servers. Firstly, what about the traffic? What about its services such as Gmail, Gtalk and Picasa? What about the large amount of advertisers that have pre paid for PPC campaigns... Clearly, even if Google were too leave China many things need cleaning up.
SinoTech Group takes the position that the more Search Engines in China the merrier. Meaning we would like Google to stay, not simply because Google has well known SEM and SEO processes but it provides a balance for advertisers seeking a specific audience not found on Baidu.
Google China CEO John Liu said a month ago, its new strategy was to reduce investment into wholly localized products but continue to offer its global products in China. This was the first time, I started to worry about the potential internal meetings about their future in China. Even the naming from "Google China" to "Google in China" signaled all was not well with their relationship in this country.
So, without Google in China I am afraid the Search Market will move backwards while others rally to fill this gap. I expect to see a country with 4-5 Chinese Search Engines with Google or Bing (Microsoft's Search Engine) failing to become legitimate in this market. For SinoTech, we hope Google stays in China and that the newer search engines develop alongside the incumbents- this will ultimately drive more innovation; benefiting Chinese searchers and advertisers alike.
