Google Goes To China

While the search engine company has had an office in Hong Kong for some time, they can now work in Mainland China.

Being in Hong Kong meant Google could not market itself to mainland businesses beyond its AdWords and AdSense offerings.

Early reports from the 21st Century Business Herald hint the new headquarters for www.google.com.cn will be in Shanghai.

Google's entry to the mainland means it will now compete with another search engine company where it possesses a minority stock holding. Baidu.com leads the market in Chinese language search with its search engine, while Yahoo ranked second to it in search traffic in 2004.

The market is small but growing, with 2004 search engine business at about $150 million USD. And the growth will continue as government mandates increase the number of tech-savvy college graduates.

Science and technology education began getting a big push twenty years ago. Now China turns out scores of engineering graduates, and China's private sector has started to flourish like a nascent Silicon Valley.

As those engineers build or join their own startup companies, Google will be in position to compete and offer them advertising opportunities.

Cited from Webpronews

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