As a quick follow-up to yesterday’s somewhat rambling post on the subject: even if the government expels the company, Google won’t be leaving China.

Seemingly lost amidst all the windbaggery on this topic is the fact that according to Alexa, google.cn is as of this writing the #3 most-trafficked website in China. google.com, though, is #6.

I’m now beginning to think that Google’s strategy here might have something to do with the fact that google.com is already one of the top websites in China, with or without google.cn. Sure, by exiting the country entirely, they lose some leverage with the government, but monetarily, one would guess that at least some of the viewership and revenue from the Chinese operations will transfer back to the mothership.

Of course, the Chinese government could block Google’s domain entirely, like they do with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and they well might, but I would rate such a prospect as somewhat unlikely, since the GFW can already filter particular search queries when it wants to begin with.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 3:58 and is filed under Miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.