Hong Kong, Feb 4: China Tuesday announced a flurry of retaliatory measures against the US, including tariffs on imports of products such as coal, liquefied natural gas products and crude oil, as well as an antitrust probe into Google. It also placed two other US firms on an unreliable entity list that could bar them from investing in China. China and Google have had a long and entangled relationship going back to the early 2000s.
What is Google’s relationship with China?
Google launched Chinese-language search engine google.cn in 2006. It was censored to comply with Beijing’s laws, and in 2009, was a major search engine in China with about 36% market share.
In 2010, in response to a cyberattack and an increasing unwillingness to comply with censorship rules, Google said it was no longer willing to block search results and shut down its Chinese search engine, redirecting users to its Hong Kong site instead.
Beijing later blocked Google services under its Great Firewall censorship system, including its email service Gmail, as well as its Chrome browser and search engine, making it inaccessible to users in mainland China.
China typically blocks most Western internet platforms, such as Google, Facebook and Instagram.
Why is China investigating Google?
China’s State Administration for Market Regulation said Tuesday it was investigating Google on suspicion of violating antitrust laws.
While regulators did not provide further details, the announcement came minutes after the 10% tariffs imposed by Donald Trump came into effect. (AP)