By Charles Arthur: Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has postponed the launch in China of a new mobile phone incorporating its email and web services, following its row with the government there over censorship and hacking of its internal network.
“The launch we have been working on with [mobile carrier] China Unicom has been postponed,” said a Google spokesperson.
Informed observers said that Google had decided that it could not launch a handset which relies on Google’s services – particularly its web and email services, which would be “baked” into the handset’s operating system – at a time when it could not be sure whether those will continue to be available in China.
Google last week accused Chinese hackers of compromising its internal networks to try to access the Google-operated webmail accounts of human rights activists, who have been repeatedly targeted by the Chinese government. As a result, Google said it will seek to end its self-imposed censorship of its search results there.
Though Google has begun talks with the Chinese government to see whether it will be allowed to lift its censorship, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday that the search giant must obey China’s laws and traditions. That implies that Google will have to close its google.cn site, which would mean most of its 700 employees there would be out of work.
Although there are mobile phones sold in China which use Google’s free Android operating system, none so far has incorporated its Gmail and web search apps as the proposed one would. Sources familiar with Google’s thinking said that they decided that launching the phone and then withdrawing the email and search service would “seriously compromise the user experience”.
Google has not yet set a date when it will stop censoring its search results inside China. The Chinese government insists that internet searches are censored to remove material deemed “subversive or pornographic” – with human rights and dissidents’ work deemed to fall into the former category.