Google Extends In China
August 21, 2007 | by Christopher Nickson
Google has bought a stake in a Chinese social network site and has approval to provide Internet content in the country.
Google is continuing its quest for world domination. The search giant has announced that it’s bought a stake in the Chinese community site Tianya.cn.
That takes Google not only into China, currently the world’s second-largest Internet market, but also into social networking.
Although the size of Google’s stake hasn’t been confirmed, reports put it at anywhere from 10-60%. No financial details have been revealed.
Google might be the search engine of choice for many, but it’s not China’s favorite. There it lags behind Baidu.com, which has more than a 58% share of the market, compared to Google’s 22%.
With 162 million web users, China is a massive and rapidly-growing market, and social networking has taken off there, with plenty of venture capital investment.
As a sign that Google is eyeing the Chinese market very seriously, the company has won preliminary approval for the Chinese government to provide Internet content. That will continue to put it in competition with Baidu, which has gain approval to offer its own reporting.
Google has a Chinese-language map search service and also offers its online word processing program, while additionally it’s attempting to build an online Chinese library service. It also opened an engineering research center in Shanghai.
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