NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

By Zen Soo, Sarah Dai, Yingzhi Yang

Google’s potential return to China with a censored search app, after almost a decade since it left the country, could mark the strongest challenge yet to domestic online search market leader Baidu.

US-based Google has been developing a censored mobile search app that would comply with Chinese regulations, though whether that would be rolled out still depends on approval from the government, a person familiar with the plans told the South China Morning Post. The plan for a search app was first reported by The Intercept, while The Information reported Google also had plans for a news-aggregation app for China.

“Baidu could lose significant search traffic and sales share if Google returns to China in six to nine months,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ling Vey-sern in a research note.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Magill.