Google Continues to Struggle with China

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By Trey Thoelcke Published
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Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Transparency Report showed a sharp drop in traffic from China. The cause is not known, but it could be that the central government does not want its own people to track the changing of the guard among its top leaders. There has been friction among these leaders about how much power each will have once the changeover is done. Oddly, traffic did pick up more recently, according to Bloomberg.

China continues to be Google’s Achilles’ heel. China is the largest internet market in the world. Google has suffered from hacking and traffic blocks there, and it is a distant second to local search company Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) in terms of market share. The Chinese government seems set on keeping Google well behind its local favorite. With the roadblock in China, there are few places Google can turn outside the largest developed nations and parts of South America. Russia has a dominant search engine — Yandex. And India has its own — Rediff.

Google’s problems in China may be its most immediate ones among developed nations, but its problems in these regions are much greater than that.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Trey Thoelcke →

Trey has been an editor and author at 24/7 Wall St. for more than a decade, where he has published thousands of articles analyzing corporate earnings, dividend stocks, short interest, insider buying, private equity, and market trends. His comprehensive coverage spans the full spectrum of financial markets, from blue-chip stalwarts to emerging growth companies.

Beyond 24/7 Wall St., Trey has created and edited financial content for Benzinga and AOL's BloggingStocks, contributing additional hundreds of articles to the investment community. He previously oversaw the 24/7 Climate Insights site, managing editorial operations and content strategy, and currently oversees and creates content for My Investing News.

Trey's editorial expertise extends across multiple publishing environments. He served as production editor at Dearborn Financial Publishing and development editor at Kaplan, where he helped shape financial education materials. Earlier in his career, he worked as a writer-producer at SVE. His freelance editing portfolio includes work for prestigious clients such as Sage Publications, Rand McNally, the Institute for Supply Management, the American Library Association, Eggplant Literary Productions, and Spiegel.

Outside of financial journalism, Trey writes fiction and has been an active member of the writing community for years, overseeing a long-running critique group and moderating workshop sessions at regional conventions. He lives with his family in an old house in the Midwest.

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