Google may withdraw from Chinese market

According to foreign media reports on the morning of January 13, Google announced on its official blog that it is considering closing its operations in China including the website Google.cn.

Google's senior vice president and chief legal officer David Drummond published an article "A new approach to China" on Google's official blog, outlining Google's view and consideration of its operations in China.

Google said January 12, 2009 that they are no longer willing to continue reviewing Google search results in China, which may force them to shut down the google.cn site and its office in China.

On the same day Google shares fell 1.3 percent to 583.05 U.S. dollars to close at 590.48 U.S. dollars on Tuesday.

"Clearly not good news for Google and clearly not good news for consumers. You've got to think that eventually Google figures out a way to deal with this. If they do have to shut down their Chinese operations, they would be able to reinstate them. Hopefully soon. I can't imagine that this would be permanent."

"China is a great growth engine for every business. It is a great opportunity for Google as well. You've got to think that there is some way the industry can figure out how to deal with hackers. This has been a problem on and off for lots of other companies, and a major frustration for users."