Whatever Google’s reason for threatening to leave China, the latest numbers from StatCounter, a free online stat service, show that it certainly isn’t for lack of opportunity. Google has been steadily gaining ground on China’s premier search service, Baidu, since last August.
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According to StatCounter, Google held just 28% of China’s search market back in August and since has climbed to nearly 43%. That’s a 15-percentage-point gain in just four or five months. Yahoo and Bing account for just over 1% of China’s search engine market.
While estimates put Google’s projected 2010 income from business in China at around 2% of the company’s entire revenue, the long-term implications of pulling out of the country are much larger.
If any company should just give up the ghost and get out of China before making any more PR (and human rights) gaffes, maybe it’s Yahoo.