Google to focus on mobile Internet in China
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Google says it's grappling with an  unusual challenge in China's Internet market -- how to cater to  masses of Web surfers who go online for the first time via  mobile devices, rather than migrating from PCs.
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A Chinese group announced it began operating what it says is the world&#39;s largest next-generation Internet network over the weekend, which will boost data transmission speeds and bring more Internet
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China is expected to have more than 600 million cell phone users by 2010, state media said Wednesday.  The Xinhua News Agency, citing the Ministry of Information Industry, said the number of users this year should reach 520 million.
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China seeks to put technical Internet management issues on the agenda of a U.N.-run forum concerning the development of the Internet.
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Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai said attempts to access Google&#160;and other search engines were successful Friday, despite claims on a U.S. blog that traffic to these&#160;sites was redirected&#160;to Chinese search engine Baidu.com.The claim first surfaced on TechCrunch, a U.S. blog that largely covers Internet startups before being picked up by other sites. The headline of that post alleged &quot;Baidu hijacking Google traffic In China,&quot; but offered no evidence to prove the claim apart from an undated, modified screenshot showing Baidu&#39;s Web page below the URL for Google Blogsearch.In a follow-up post, TechCrunch said &quot;new reports have surfaced that would indicate that China has unilaterally blocked all three major search engines in China and is redirecting all requests to Baidu.&quot; That report cited posts on other blogs, where users claimed to have been redirected from U.S. search sites to Baidu.A Google spokeswoman in Beijing did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.However, several Internet users -- four in Beijing and two in Shanghai -- reported on Friday morning that search engines operated by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, including Google Blogsearch, one of the sites reportedly most affected, were accessible. Attempts to reach these sites had not been redirected to Baidu, they said.Internet censorship is a serious problem in China, and regulators routinely&#160;block access to sites&#160;with content they don&#39;t like. But Chinese officials very rarely comment on censorship efforts, making it difficult for users to determine when a site has been blocked or is inaccessible for other reasons.Timing can be an important factor, with Chinese censors blocking access to some Web sites around politically sensitive dates, such as the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre and the Chinese Communist Party Congress, a political confab held once every five years to choose top leaders and set policy that is now underway in Beijing.Access to a search engine can also be blocked if a user searches for a politically sensitive word, such as a search for information on the banned Falungong religious sect.Tracking the ebb and flow of censorship efforts can be a challenge, as access to sites can be blocked and opened, seemingly by whim. On Wednesday, Wikipedia remained blocked in China and access to YouTube was shut off. But censors eased off on other sites, opening up access to Google&#39;s Blogspot blogging service and permitting users to view pictures on Flickr, which had been blocked even though the site was accessible in China.Even when Web sites are accessible in China, there can be moments when sites cannot be reached. For example, one of the Chinese Internet users in Beijing contacted for this story said he was unable to reach Google.com three days ago. Attempts to reach the site were not redirected to Baidu, and Google has been accessible during the last couple of days, he said.While the Chinese government may not be redirecting search-engine traffic to Baidu, censors did this in 2002, just before the previous Party Congress opened in Beijing. At that time, censors cut off access to Google and redirected traffic to several local search engines, including Baidu. However, the rerouting did not affect all users and did not appear to be done at a national level, analysts said at that time.&#160;
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China&#39;s second-largest mobile phone company says it plans to open up to 3,000 Internet cafes by the end of this year. State-controlled China Unicom, which already operates 400 Internet cafes across the country
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Google technology will power China.com's online search engine under the terms of a partnership announced.
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French telecoms equipment maker  Alcatel is nearing a deal with a Chinese peer on cooperating to  build third-generation (3G) mobile phone networks using a  Chinese technology standard, a senior executive said.
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The dominance of Google in the search space is almost written in stone in North America, but there may yet be some populous spots in the world where the market is wide open. Now its main Chinese competitor has launched a new assault.
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Google Inc. will open a research and development center in Shanghai, stepping up its effort to build a bigger search business in China.
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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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Microsoft Expanding Live Search into China Under a deal with China Telecom, Microsoft will be serving a Chinese version of Live Search to China Telecom&#8217;s 25 million broadband customers.  The People&#8217;s Daily Online reports: Microsoft has been looking for an opportunity to get into the search market since Baidu.com, Yahoo! and Google joined. The launch of Live [...]
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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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InfoWorld - Google will open a research and development center in Shanghai, stepping up its effort to build a bigger search business in China.
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China's Mobile Search Leader Makes Its Services Available for Free to IM                     Users on Handheld Devices and PCs    SHANGHAI, China, Sept. 18 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- mInfo(R) Inc.
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SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc.'s recently launched news service in China doesn't display results from Web sites blocked by that country's authorities, raising prickly questions for an online search engine that has famously promised to "do no evil."   Dynamic Internet Technology Inc., a research firm striving to defeat online censorship, conducted tests that found Google omits results from the government-banned sites if search requests are made through computers connecting to the Internet in China.    Steered by an identical search request, computers with a United States connection retrieved results from the sites blocked by 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.