Google, the world's most popular search engine, has had a troubled existence in China, but is still hanging in there to some extent after being given a reprieve of sorts from the Chinese government. While Google dominates the online search business in the U.S. and much of the world, it has been a distant second place in the world's most populous nation.China's leading search engine Baidu is known, among other things, for providing links to lots of unauthorized online music. However, since Baidu merely links to, rather than providing the unauthorized music files, it is not liable for the resulting copyright infringements under Chinese law.
In an effort to compete with Baidu, in 2008, Google introduced a free legal music service in China.The Google Music service is an innovative experiment in an attempt to convert illegal downloading to legal downloading. The music service is operated by Chinese Internet music company Top100.cn, owned in part by NBA basketball star Yao Ming. Top100.cn secured licenses from record companies and music publishers to offer their songs and recordings for download in China. Mainland Chinese Internet users can therefore legally download a huge variety of music for free although Google and Top100.cn hope to eventually make the venture profitable through online advertising (which has so far proven not to be a profitable business model for most music websites).
Google's China operations took a major turn for the worse in March, 2010, when it publicly announced that it would no longer comply with Chinese censorship regulations for online content. However, instead of totally giving up the the Chinese search engine market, Google simply rerouted users in mainland China to its Hong Kong website (although Hong Kong is part of China, it is largely self-governing and therefore not subject to mainland China's censorship regulations).
Interestingly, in addition to providing a link to its Hong Kong search engine, the google.cn page also provides a link to Google Music which is still operational in China. Despite all the problems Google has experienced, it seems that it is not yet willing to give up on the Google Music service and has accordingly made an additional investment in Top100.cn. Chinese media have reported that both Google and Yao Ming have invested in a second funding for Top100.cn.
Although its impossible to know how all this will turn out, Google's music service is still hanging on even though Google's main incentive in offering the music service (gaining search engine market share in China) has been seriously diminished. Google may hope that if its music search service ultimately becomes profitable in China, it can be introduced in other parts of the world as well. As with most online music business ventures, continued existence is iffy and profitability is only something that can be hoped for in the future.
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