The executive chairman of Google Inc yesterday condemned the Chinese government’s policy of censoring the Internet.
“The Chinese government is unhappy with our unwillingness to support the censorship regime,” Eric Schmidt told reporters in Taipei.
In March last year, the US Internet search giant redirected users in China to its unrestricted Hong Kong Web site — despite Chinese firewalls still managing to censor search results — in the wake of Google’s own Web site and the e-mail accounts of human rights activists being hacked, attacks that were traced back to China.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Google said it was no longer willing to censor searches in China and that it might even pull out of the country, but the standoff was resolved in July last year when Google said it had renewed its license with the Chinese government to continue making products in the country that did not require censorship.
Schmidt yesterday said Google’s business in China was “growing and profitable,” and the company still intended to serve Chinese consumers within the restrictions imposed by the government.
Concerning Google’s Android platform used in smartphones and -tablets, he said the operating system has a high market share in China and the company is happy that Taiwanese companies are selling Android-based devices in the country.
HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s No. 4 smartphone brand, started to make forays into China last year by debuting branded smartphones that mostly run on Google’s Android platform.
Schmidt also criticized Microsoft Corp’s attempts to charge makers of Android-based electronics devices royalties and claiming that Android infringes upon Microsoft’s patents.
“We disagree with paying royalty fees for products they [Microsoft] didn’t build,” he said.
Google is the creator of Android and it would continue to support its partners via knowledge, information sharing and patent access to help resolve any problems they encounter, Schmidt said.
Among the companies that have agreed to pay royalties to Microsoft are Taiwan’s HTC, Acer Inc (宏碁), Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, View-Sonic Corp and Velocity Micro Inc of the US, as well as Japan’s Onkyo Corp.
Schmidt stepped down as Google chief executive in April after a decade-long stint. Google co-founder Larry Page is now chief executive, while Schmidt handles the company’s relations with governments and helps to negotiate acquisitions.
Schmidt, who visited China and South Korea before arriving in Taiwan, met with senior government and business officials yesterday, including President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
He said the company expects to complete the acquisition of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc by April next year.
The first Samsung mobile phone running the latest version of Android, dubbed “Ice Cream Sandwich,” would go on sale “very soon,” he said, without giving a timetable.
Prior to meeting the press, Schmidt and Acer founder Stan Shih (施振榮) participated in a forum organized by the Chinese--language CommonWealth Magazine.
Schmidt said competition between South Korea and Taiwan was driving down hardware prices and that benefits consumers, while Shih said South Korea is “everyone’s enemy.”
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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