Google and China – Friends at Last?

It’s good news for Google, as the Chinese Government have renewed their licence for another year.

The relationship between the Chinese Government and the Internet giants went sour in 2010 when Google started to redirect Chinese users to its Hong Kong website due to concerns over censorship and hacking. 

China regulates content on the internet through licensing and oversight of internet companies.  This means sites such as Google's YouTube, Facebook and microblogging site Twitter are amongst the list of websites that are popular in the international online community but censored in China. 

Domestic Chinese internet companies, such as search firm Baidu, are the market leaders in China.  That is unlikely to change despite the renewed license secured by Google, but it does imply that all is not lost in China for the Internet Giants.

Google to Buy Motorola Mobility Subject to Shareholders

Google is taking a high-stakes gamble in the global smartphone war by making a move to buy Motorola Mobility.  The internet giant’s have announced a deal worth $12.5bn (£7.7bn).

A joint statement said the boards of both companies had unanimously approved the deal, which should be completed by the end of this year, or early in 2012.

Earlier this year, Motorola split into two separate companies.  The Mobility side of the business is responsible for developing and manufacturing mobile phones, whilst Motorola Solutions covers wider technologies for corporate customers and governments.

Shares in Motorola Mobility jumped 56% by the close of trading in New York on Monday, to $38.13, still below the offer price of $40 per share. Shares in Google fell 1.8%.  Interestingly, shares in Nokia have risen as well, reinforcing speculation that they too are a bidding target, with Microsoft the potential bidder.

Whether you're planning to use your phone mainly for calls or need access to emails and the internet, we've got the device that's right for you

The internet will transform the UK economy

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) claims that if the internet was an economic sector it would be the UK's fifth largest. This would make the sector larger than the construction, transport and utilities industries.

According to the research the internet is worth £100bn to the UK economy. Over half of that is made up of the amount of time that users spend on online shopping and on the cost of their connections and devices to access the web. Approximately 40% of the rest comes from investment in the UK's internet infrastructure, government IT spending and net exports.


Google commissioned the research, and according to Matt Brittin, managing director of Google UK: "The internet is a central pillar of the UK's economy.


"The sector has come of age, and with great prospects for further growth the UK internet economy will be vital to the UK's future prosperity," he added.

The future of the written word is online and digital

As I browsed the Apple iPads section of PC World yesterday, it suddenly dawned on me that the future of newspapers is going to be online. It seems I’m not the only one that thinks so, but am I the only one that is concerned about it?



Addressing the audience at the Activate 2010 summit held at the Guardian, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said that the experience of the reading news will move to digital devices quite rapidly – and that it will involve personalised and local news which will be alert to your interests and existing knowledge. He also warned that organisations should think of their mobile strategy ahead of their internet strategy – but that the two were intertwined so deeply that it was impossible to think of one without the other.


I certainly agree that with the uprising of mobile technology it is inevitable that the way we access the news, and that as technology develops, our approach to news will continue to be personalised. We will be able to read the news with the addition of video and colour, which can only be a good thing, can’t it?

Google set to take on the digital book giants in 2010!

According to Analysts at the Yankee Group have predicted that the US ebook reader market is "about to catch fire sparking from $1.3bn (£0.86bn) in revenue in 2010 to $2.5bn (£1.65bn) by 2013".

Currently Amazon’s Kindle is leading the market, but is only able to link to it’s own store it’s the same story with their closest rival’s Apple and Apple’s iBookstore.

Google is set to join the party as they have announced that they are going to launch their own online e-book store later on this year. However, Google Editions books will not be tied to a specific device. They will be readable on any web enabled device from a mobile phone to a netbook and from a tablet to a desktop, the implications are clear for e-book stores tied to a single device.

Google said it would make "millions of books searchable via the web", which in the past has got them into legal difficulty as critics have long claimed Google's deal with US publishers and authors would give them a monopoly over online book sales.

Watch this space!

Google Pulls Out of China

In March, The World Bank raised its 2010 economic growth forecast for China to 9.5% from 9%. It said consumption by both businesses and households would grow strongly, even though government stimulus measures were being pared back. In 2010 China is expected to replace Japan as the world's second-largest economy, and Germany as the world's biggest exporter. For some foreigners, it may be tempting to think that China is no longer a developing nation, or has even become a superpower.

However, their growing global status has taken a knock recently as one of the world's most prominent corporations is saying it is no longer willing to co-operate in China's censorship of the internet. Google have effectively shut their mainland Chinese search service, google.cn, striking a major blow to China's international image. The US giant is redirecting users in mainland China to its unrestricted Hong Kong site, although Chinese firewalls mean results still come back censored.

Google have actually threatened to leave the Chinese market completely this year after cyber attacks were traced back to China. Whereas China has moved to further limit free speech on the web as Google's own websites and the e-mail accounts of human rights activists have recently come under cyber attack.

China has said Google's move to stop censoring search results is "totally wrong" and accused it of breaking a promise made when it launched in China.

Chen Yafei, a Chinese information technology specialist, told Reuters that Google should have accepted Chinese regulation if it wanted to operate in the country.

"Any company entering China should abide by Chinese laws..." he said.
"Chinese internet users will have no regrets if Google withdraws."

While Google is the world's most popular search engine, it is a distant number two in the Chinese market, which is dominated by Baidu. However, because of the size and growth rate of China's internet population, any loss of business there is likely to harm Google's future growth prospects.

Beijing said the decision should not affect ties with Washington. The White House responded by saying that it was "disappointed" that Google and China had not been able to resolve their differences.