Common Misperceptions About the China-Google Spat

With misinformation flying about the Google-China spat, Sky Canaves clears up some of the larger points for the Wall Street Journal:

• Google has failed in China: Only if you consider boosting its market share from 13% to 36%, and while “Google doesn’t say if it’s profitable in China … there’s certainly no reason to assume it’s not.”

• Google.com is not accessible in China: It mostly is; unlike Google.cn (the Chinese version), links to forbidden content come up in search, but users get error messages. (On Google.cn, such links don’t appear at all.)
• Google has Gmail servers in China: In fact, it deliberately decided against putting any there specifically to protect email.
• Google has already shut down its China operations: Neither the central nor Beijing governments have had a whiff of that, officials say.

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