Following recent cyber attacks on Google.cn, the companies presence in China, Google have recently decided to cease censoring their search results in the country, which will likely lead to a full withdrawal considering such a decision is against the law in China, which heavily censors the internet in a method that has become known as the ‘great firewall of China’.

With Google admitting that the move may mean “having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”, how does this withdrawal affect the other big search engines, Bing and Yahoo?

Currently there have been no official reports or statement from either company as to whether they will start gearing up for a larger share of the market or indeed follow Google’s lead and pull out of China completely. Many analysts are suggesting that it’s unlikely to see Microsoft following Google’s lead.

Microsoft has stated that there have been no indications of any attacks on its websites, although Google stated the attacks affected 20 other large companies. Yahoo released a statement shortly after the attacks were reported backing up Google’s position but has yet to say whether or not it was a target of any attacks.
“Yahoo! is committed to protecting human rights, privacy and security. We condemn any attempts to infiltrate company networks to obtain user information. We stand aligned with Google that these kinds of attacks are deeply disturbing and strongly believe that the violation of user privacy is something that we as internet pioneers must all oppose.”

Nate Elliott, analyst at Forrester believed both companies are likely to stay firmly grounded in the Chinese market. Elliot believes that theor continued compliance with Chinese law is an indication of that and believes that both companies are less concerned about the moral high ground taken by Google in recent years.

Mr. Elliot stated: “Google put itself on a pedestal and positioned itself as a company with morals that believes in organising the world’s information freely and for the good of all. Microsoft and Yahoo! have never done that. They are just businesses.

I would be surprised if either company sacrificed the chance to exploit a huge developing market – especially when they are both losing the search war so badly to Google in the other major markets.”

It’s worth noting that Google has never been a leading search engine in China in the same way it is in the UK and US. In fact, Chinese search Baidu is still in control of around 60% of the market. Likewise, Bing and Yahoo will have to move quickly if they want to capture any of the market share lost from Google’s departure.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 10:12 pmand is filed under Bing, Google, Online Content, Online Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.