April 2nd, 2010  - by Najam

BEIJING: Popular Chinese web portal Sina said Thursday it was reassessing its cooperation with Google following the US Internet giant’s decision to effectively shut down its China search engine.A spokeswoman for Sina told AFP a state media report which said the company was “re-evaluating cooperation with Google” was accurate, but declined to give further details.”No details have been finalised,” a spokeswoman for Sina, who refused to be named, told AFP.
“Google actually owes all its business partners in China a response.” Google announced on March 22 that it was redirecting mainland Chinese users to an uncensored site in Hong Kong, making good on an earlier pledge not to go along with the Communist Party government’s censorship rules.Google’s decision to defy Beijing was based on what it called concerns over censorship and cyberattacks it said originated from China.Since then, several companies have dropped partnerships with Google after reportedly coming under political pressure to do so, highlighting the wider ramifications from its decision to scale back its China operations.
Tianya, for example, the operator of one of China’s most popular Internet forums, has said it will halt work with the online giant on several projects.TOM Group, which runs online and mobile Internet services in mainland China and is owned by Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-shing, has also stopped users from visiting its website through Google’s search engine service.Earlier Thursday, the official Xinhua news agency quoted an unnamed Sina spokesperson as saying Google was not meeting the web portal’s standards.”All partners of Sina must abide by Chinese laws and regulations as well as have long-term plans to operate in China,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying.So far, Google has kept its 600-odd staff in mainland China and it is unclear what will happen to the employees.Under Sina’s partnership with Google, the US Internet firm’s web page search service is embedded in the Chinese web portal’s search box.China is the world’s largest online market by users, with at least 384 million people online and more than 750 million mobile subscribers — many of whom access web content via their handsets.

Source: News Agencies