Having banned Google 15 years ago, what does China plan to do now?

Although Google doesn't offer services directly in China, it still has business operations in many areas, particularly through partnerships with mobile phone manufacturers using the Android operating system.

Google's office in Beijing. Photo: Inc.

As part of China's response to US tariffs on its goods, an antitrust investigation into Google has been launched. However, the announcement from the State Administration for Market Regulation did not specify the suspicious activities of the internet company or the scope of the investigation. This is even more surprising given that Google's search engine and all its services have long been unavailable in China.

However, the company still has many advertising, cloud computing, hardware manufacturing, and application development activities linked to the country with the world's largest population.

Google's operations in China

Google launched its search engine for the Chinese market in 2006, under the .cn domain. By 2009, the service passed censorship, entered the mainland market, and became one of the most used websites. However, in 2010, Google's entire service was shut down for failing to comply with the filtering requirements of the authorities. Since then, the Google website and all of the company's services have ceased operation in China.

Despite no significant activity, Google maintains offices in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. According to CNBC , the American company's business in these markets includes advertising, cloud computing, hardware manufacturing, application development, AI research, and more. Google's goal is to provide infrastructure for its domestic companies as they expand internationally.

The search engine ceased operations in China in 2010, but the company did not leave. Photo: Fortune.

For example, the company sells keyword advertising on its search engine and YouTube to Chinese companies in markets they want to target. Google also provides cloud services to many unicorns like TikTok, NetEase, and Shein operating in Southeast Asia and other regions.

In the realm of AI, the internet giant established an artificial intelligence research center in Beijing in 2017, focusing its development on education and natural language understanding. Open-source projects like TensorFlow and Kubernetes have a significant impact on the development community in China. They also hold their own annual I/O event for programmers in the country of over a billion people.

The Play Store app store is not available in China. However, Google still collaborates to bring domestic apps to the international market. Chinese phones sold domestically use their own user interface but are still built on the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) kernel, led by Google.

According to a 2023 report, Alphabet's revenue came from the Asia-Pacific region for 17%. However, the contribution from this massive market was not disclosed.

What is China investigating?

According to the Financial Times , sources close to the investigation indicate that authorities are targeting the Android operating system. The issue in question is the alleged monopoly that harms Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, such as Xiaomi and Oppo, which use the platform.

The source also revealed that China had been investigating Google since 2019, around the same time Huawei was sanctioned. However, the investigation was then put on hold until December 2024, when Trump was about to take office. The Financial Times reported that authorities had searched Google's Beijing offices since early January and requested relevant information.

Three American companies are under scrutiny by Chinese authorities. Photo: FT.

Liu Xu, a researcher at the National Institute for Strategic Studies at Tsinghua University in China, believes the investigation targeting American companies is part of retaliatory measures against the Trump administration's tariffs on goods from the country with the world's largest population. Besides Google, Nvidia and Intel are also under scrutiny by the Chinese authorities.

Meanwhile, according to Gong Jiong of the China University of Business and Foreign Trade, Chinese mobile companies have long been dissatisfied with Google's market manipulation of Android. Currently, with the exception of Apple and Huawei, all other companies have to pay fees to use this operating system on smartphones sold internationally.

In recent years, Google has repeatedly faced accusations of violating antitrust laws. Numerous lawsuits have taken place in the EU, South Korea, Russia, India, and Turkey. In August 2024, a US federal judge ruled that Google had illegally monopolized the search market. The Department of Justice is considering a proposal to break up the company's business, including requiring it to divest from the Android operating system and the Chrome browser.