Google losing users in China
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(InfoWorld) - Fewer Chinese users are seeking out Google for its search services, according to a new report by the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC). According to the survey by China's official Internet number cruncher, 62.1 percent of Chinese users turned to local favorite Baidu for search, up from about 52 percent in 2005. Much of that growthÂ came at Google's expense. Baidu also had the highest brand recognition among search engines, with 86.5 percent of respondents identifying with the name, compared to only 64 percent for Google. CNNIC is an agency organization that monitors Internet use in China. Although its surveys are considered representative of Chinese Internet use, CNNIC rarely releases its methodology or sample size. However, for this survey, CNNIC said that it interviewed 4,500 total Chinese Internet users, 1,500 each in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and that the poll had a 5 percent margin of error. Google saw its market share drop from 33 percent last year to 25.3 percent in the current survey. While a majority of users identified with the brand, 31.9 percent recognized Google's Chinese name, "Gu Ge," or "Harvest Song," in Chinese, compared to 16.3 percent for its English name. Google did come out ahead in one respect: it was the first choice for more non-student users with an income of greater than 3,000 renminbi ($378) than its rivals, with 46.5 percent. Despite the rivalry between Baidu and Google, it seems that a bigger user search pie would benefit both: 76.3 percent of survey respondents said they used more than one search engine regularly for a given subject.
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Google Inc. and Baidu.com Inc., its biggest rival in China, are exploring similar options to expand their online video services in the world's fourth-largest economy.
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Google services were slow or inaccessible to some users of a single Internet service provider Tuesday, the company said.
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China's online population has soared to 210 million people and could surpass the United States this year to become the world's biggest, the Chinese government said Friday.
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Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai said attempts to access Google Inc. and other search engines were successful Friday, despite claims on a U.S. blog that traffic to these sites was redirected to Chinese search engine Baidu.com Inc.
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Just in time for Halloween, Google&#39;s YouTube became available again in China Wednesday, two weeks after it was blocked.Although Chinese Internet regulators don&#39;t comment on why sites are blocked,&#160;YouTube&#39;s blocking&#160;seemed to be tied one or two events: the 17th Communist Party Congress, the Chinese Communist Party&#39;s most important meeting, held every five years; and the launching of YouTube&#39;s traditional language site in Taiwan, both during the same week in the middle of this month. The YouTube Taiwan site is also available in China.However, while YouTube can be viewed again, Blogspot is once again unavailable, one of several sites that see-saw between being allowed or prohibited. Although attempts to reach Blogspot&#39;s homepage rerouted to Blogger.com&#39;s simplified Chinese homepage, neither Blogspot owner Google&#39;s official blog nor the infamous Chinabounder blog -- which features the sexual exploits and political rantings of a foreign English teacher in Shanghai -- could be reached.Blocked throughout the recent changes&#160;is the English-language site of Wikipedia. Its Chinese-language site is&#160;almost always unavailable&#160;here.China regularly blocks access to Web sites that it finds objectionable, including those dealing with politically sensitive subjects such as the Falun Gong religious cult and independence for Taiwan and Tibet, along with some pornographic sites.&#160;
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Last week in China, A Lot of Baidu and a bit of Microsoft and Google There hardly goes a week by that Baidu is not in the news. They are actively getting into new partnerships, boasting about their Market Share and releasing new services. Google has yet to find a way to counter this. The rest [...]
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The number of Internet users in China stood at 210 million at the end of last year, up 53 percent from the same time in 2006 when there were 137 million.
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(InfoWorld) - The number of Chinese Internet users hit 162 million at the end of June, growing at the fastest rate since 2004, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said Wednesday. The latest numbers show China's Internet "entered a new stage of rapid growth," CNNIC said in a report (in Chinese). The number of Chinese Internet users increased 31.7 percent since June 2006, said CNNIC, which oversees the .cn top-level domain and tracks Internet usage in China. Thanks in part to a change in CNNIC's definition of an Internet user, that was the fastest growth seen in China since mid-2004, when the number of Internet users grew 34.5 percent to reach 79.5 million. Numbers released by CNNIC in the middle of 2005 and 2006 showed annual growth of 18.2 percent and 18.1 percent, respectively. In its latest report, CNNIC changed the definition of an Internet user from someone who spends at least one hour online each week to someone who accessed the Internet at least once during the previous six months. The previous definition had been in use for 10 years. Most Chinese Internet users -- 122.4 million people -- get online using wired broadband, CNNIC said. Wireless Internet access is also widely used, with 55.6 million people using this method, including 44.3 million people who access the Internet from mobile phones, CNNIC said, noting that some users access the Internet with more than one type of connection. The latest numbers bring China's Internet penetration rate to 12.3 percent, slightly below the global penetration rate of 17.6 percent, CNNIC said.
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Chinese authorities have between February and August of this year closed 1,600 Internet bars. In additional fines amounting to a total of 100 million yuan (9.
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Google has approval to provide Internet content in China, potentially allowing it to offer news in the world's second-largest Internet market.
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The search outfit boasts of making all the information in the world just a click away. These days that doesn&#39;t seem to apply in China.
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China's Web viewers can no longer access YouTube, but Blogspot.com and Flickr photos are now available.
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(InfoWorld) - Google will open a research and development center in Shanghai, stepping up its effort to build a bigger search business in China. Google hasÂ struggled in ChinaÂ to create the dominance it enjoys elsewhere in the world. It took 19 percent of the country's search market revenue in the first quarter, compared with 57 percent for market leader Baidu.com, according to Analysys International, a telecom research and consulting company. A spokeswoman for Google in China, Marsha Wang, confirmed the plans for an R&D lab Friday. She declined to say how many people it will employ or provide other details. Google and its U.S. rivals, Yahoo and Microsoft, haveÂ faced political difficulties in China, for agreeing to censor search results. In addition, their services are sometimes hard to access from inside the country. Yahoo's Flickr division said this week that its service was being blocked in China. Â
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A new Chinese news service launched by Google displays no results from websites banned by China's officials. The search engine that promises to do no evil says why include links that come up empty? anti-censorship advocates are watching.
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Foreign companies often do not understand Chinaâs Internet market, which is geared primarily to entertainment and mobile phones.
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As always some news about what Google and Baidu are up to in China but also some interesting results from a user panel with young Chinese users. Online book search Both Google and Baidu are now also in a race to corner the market for online book search. From PC Pro: Web search leader Google and its top rival [...]