The FINANCIAL — Google is likely to close the main portion of its China operation within weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an anonymous source familiar with the situation.
A person familiar with situation said on Saturday that Google is likely to take action within weeks, as WSJ reported. Separately, Chinese authorities on Friday told local news Web sites that Google's Chinese site is likely to close and that, if it does, the news sites will be required to use only official accounts of the situation, rather than publish stories from anywhere else, according to a person familiar with the order.
Google Inc, the world's biggest search engine, has been in a two-month standoff with Beijing over restrictions on the Internet and Google's claims that it and other companies were hit by hacking from within China, according to Reuters. The company's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said last week he hoped to announce soon an outcome from talks with Chinese officials on offering an uncensored search engine in that country of 384 million Internet users.
Many experts have doubted China's ruling Communist Party would compromise on censorship, and on the weekend the Financial Times reported the talks had reached an impasse and Google was "99.9 percent" certain to shut its Chinese search engine, Google.cn, as Reuters reported. "Our forecast has always remained firm that once Google announced it would not accept censorship, then it was nearly impossible to imagine a scenario either where Google didn't act on that or the government accepted their position," Mark Natkin, managing director of Marbridge Consulting, told Reuters.
On Friday, Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong, asked by a reporter about Google's plan to stop filtering results, said doing so would be "irresponsible" and warned that the company would "have to bear the consequences" if it violates China's rules, according to WSJ. His comments reinforced expectations that the authorities will force Google.cn to close if the company stops censoring it.
Google has about 36% of China's search revenue, according to Analysys International, a Beijing-based research firm, compared to 58% for local rival Baidu Inc, the same source reported. The U.S. company is one of the few foreign participants with solid market share.
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