Google's China question-and-answer page inaccessible

A Chinese flag blows in the air below the Google
logo outside the Google China headquarters in Beijing Thursday, March
25, 2010. (AP / Gemunu Amarasinghe)
BEIJING — A Google question-and-answer page for
Chinese users was inaccessible from mainland China on Tuesday less than a
month after the search giant's Internet license was renewed amid a
dispute over online censorship.

The company found no technical problems with the Hong Kong-based
service, said a Google Inc. spokewoman, Courtney Hohne, in an email.
Phone calls to China's Internet regulator, the Ministry of Industry and
Information Technology, were not answered and the agency did not respond
to questions sent by fax.

Beijing encourages Web use for education and business but tries to
block material deemed subversive and closely watches sites where China's
public can leave comments. Regulators block access to social networking
sites abroad such as Facebook that pro-democracy and Tibet activists
have used to criticize the communist government.

Google's future in China has been uncertain since the company
announced in January it no longer wanted to co-operate with Beijing's
Web censorship and shut down its China-based search engine in March.
Mainland Web surfers can reach Google's Chinese-language site in Hong
Kong, which has no online censorship, but industry analysts say users
might defect to local rivals, eroding its advertising revenues.

Beijing renewed Google's Internet license last month despite the
censorship dispute, which embarrassed communist officials and prompted
questions about whether they might punish the U.S. company by barring it
from China. The country is the world's most populous Internet market,
with 420 million people online.

The answer page, www.google.com.hk/wenda, allows Chinese Web surfers
to leave questions for other users to answer. Most of those posted since
the service was launched two weeks ago are about consumer products and
housing prices.

Google launched the site after announcing last month it would end a
similar service run in partnership with a Chinese website, tianya.com.

The search page of Google's Hong Kong site was accessible from the mainland on Tuesday.

The uncertainty over Google in China has helped rival Baidu Inc., operator of the country's most popular search engine.

Google's share of search revenues fell from 31 per cent in the first
three months of the year to 24 per cent in the second quarter, according
to Analysys International, a research firm in Beijing. It said Baidu's
share rose to 70 per cent in the second quarter for the first time, up
from 64 per cent in the previous quarter.