In the Chinese Googe dispute, China has many things to lose. Among them, access to a billion-person market as a search engine, a relationship with a bourgeoning world power and a piece of the pie in a growing cell phone market.
Google has been working to infiltrate China’s mobile phone market for some time. Among their efforts, the Northern California Internet company has been giving handset manufacturers its Android operating system free of charge in the hopes they will begin to design around it and help Google have more of a hand in China’s cell phone market. It’s predicted that more Chinese citizens will use the internet from their cell phones than from their personal computers in only a couple of years.
At present, Google is head to head with China’s Baidu Inc. in the mobile-search arena.
That could all change now though as Google is likely to feel the wrath of China after redirecting traffic from Google.cn to their unfiltered Hong Kong site. The result was Chinese access to previously censored material that raised the dispute and led Google to withdraw from the country to begin with.
Many of Google’s mobile phone services revolve around their search engine which has already begun being blocked by the Chinese government. Without the search capacity it’s unlikely Google will be able to infiltrate the Chinese mobile market they have worked so hard to be a part of.
When Google made the decision to no longer adhere to the censorship demands of the Chinese government, officials warned the company, that subscribes to a strict “no evil” mantra, would have to bear the consequences. This might be what they were talking about.
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