A Google search feature was blocked in China yesterday, the company said as it awaited Beijing’s decision on whether to renew its operating license amid tensions over censorship.
Chinese users were unable to use the “suggest” feature, which offers possible results as they start to type a query, the company said.
“It appears that search queries produced by Google Suggest are being blocked for mainland users in China,” Google spokeswoman Jessica Powell said in an e-mail. “Normal searches that do not use query suggestions are unaffected.”
Google’s relations with Beijing have been tense since the US-based search giant said in January it no longer wanted to cooperate with Chinese Web filtering following hacking attacks traced to China.
Google Inc closed its China-based search engine on March 22 and began routing users to its unfiltered Hong Kong site. However, the company stopped automatic switching this week because Beijing objected and threatened to revoke its operating license.
The application deadline was Wednesday, and Powell said Google has received no word from regulators. She said the license runs through 2012, but must be renewed annually and declined to say what Google’s status is while it awaits an answer.
Xinhua news agency said “there will be a result soon,” adding that Google was “very late” in submitting the application.
Phone calls to the regulator, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, were not answered.
The China site Google.cn was operating yesterday with a tab that said “we have moved to google.com.hk.” Clicking on that took users to the Hong Kong site.
The loss of its Chinese license would set back Google’s efforts to tap into the world’s most populous Internet market of about 400 million users. Web surfers could reach the Chinese-language Hong Kong site by typing in its address, but industry analysts say some are likely to switch to Chinese competitors such as Baidu Inc.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, has about 30 percent of China’s search market, versus Baidu’s 60 percent. Analysts say the shutdown of its China search engine had little impact on revenues but the outright closure of Google.cn could hurt advertising sales.
The government promotes Internet use for education and business, but tries to block material deemed subversive or pornographic. It has temporarily blocked access to Google in the past after accusing it of spreading sexually explicit material.
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
STANDING TOGETHER: Amid China’s increasingly aggressive activities, nations must join forces in detecting and dealing with incursions, a Taiwanese official said Two senior Philippine officials and one former official yesterday attended the Taiwan International Ocean Forum in Taipei, the first high-level visit since the Philippines in April lifted a ban on such travel to Taiwan. The Ocean Affairs Council hosted the two-day event at the National Taiwan University Hospital International Convention Center. Philippine Navy spokesman Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, Coast Guard spokesman Grand Commodore Jay Tarriela and former Philippine Presidential Communications Office assistant secretary Michel del Rosario participated in the forum. More than 100 officials, experts and entrepreneurs from 15 nations participated in the forum, which included discussions on countering China’s hybrid warfare
MORE DEMOCRACY: The only solution to Taiwan’s current democratic issues involves more democracy, including Constitutional Court rulings and citizens exercising their civil rights , Lai said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is not the “motherland” of the Republic of China (ROC) and has never owned Taiwan, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday. The speech was the third in a series of 10 that Lai is scheduled to deliver across Taiwan. Taiwan is facing external threats from China, Lai said at a Lions Clubs International banquet in Hsinchu. For example, on June 21 the army detected 12 Chinese aircraft, eight of which entered Taiwanese waters, as well as six Chinese warships that remained in the waters around Taiwan, he said. Beyond military and political intimidation, Taiwan
RSS