Google Shuts China Site in Dispute Over Censorship
So fundamentally different, Mr. Brueschke believes, that Baidu will retain its hammerlock on the Chinese search industry. “The real battle in the competitive landscape is not about who's No. 1, it's about who's going to be No. 2,” he says.
In 2003, eBay bought the largest Chinese auction company — and then lost market share. In 2004, Amazon bought the largest Chinese online merchandiser — and then lost market share.
The Rise of Baidu (That's Chinese for Google)
In War Against the Internet, China Is Just a Skirmish
In Rebuke of China, Focus Falls on Cybersecurity
2000
Baidu, a Chinese search engine, is founded. Baidu will seal its dominance with support from the Chinese government in exchange for letting censors oversee its Web site.
2003
EBay buys EachNet, the leading Chinese auction house, and gets a fast start in the Chinese market. It will briefly control 80 percent of the Chinese e-commerce market before losing market share to Taobao.com, a local upstart owned by Alibaba.
2004
Yahoo enters the Chinese market, hoping to compete with Baidu.
June 2005
Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist, is sentenced to 10 years in prison for anonymously sharing a document with foreign journalists. Court documents show that Yahoo provided information that led to Mr. Shi's arrest.
Summer 2005
Microsoft rolls out a blogging service in China that does not allow words like "freedom" and "democracy" in the titles of posts.
Aug. 5, 2005
Baidu goes public at $27 a share. The stock closed at $122 by the end of the day, the biggest opening on Nasdaq since the dot-com peak in 2000. By the beginning of 2010 the stock will be valued at over $400.
Aug. 11, 2005
Seeing its operations in China floundering, Yahoo strikes a deal to turn over control of its Chinese operations to Alibaba and pay it $1 billion in exchange for a 40 percent stake in the company.
January 2006
Microsoft shuts down the blog of Zhao Jing, a well-known Chinese blogger, after the blog discussed the firing of the independent-minded editor of The Beijing News, which prompted 100 journalists at the paper to go on strike.
Jan. 24, 2006
Google announces the creation of Google.cn, its China Web search engine. It agrees to cooperate with Chinese authorities on censorship.
December 2006
EBay shuts down its main Web site in China and enters a joint venture with a Chinese company instead.
Spring 2007
MySpace introduces MySpace China. Every page includes a link allowing users or monitors to "report inappropriate information" to the authorities.
Nov. 13, 2007
Yahoo reaches an out-of-court settlement with the families of Chinese dissidents Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao, who had sued the company for handing information about personal e-mail accounts to Chinese authorities.
March 2008
Chinese authorities temporarily block YouTube.com after dozens of videos about protests in Tibet appear on the site. The site is blocked again a year later for similar reasons.
June 2009
China says that all personal computers sold in the country must include sophisticated software to filter out pornography and other "unhealthy information" from the Internet. Officials later scale back the program after an outcry from individual Internet users and corporations.
Sept. 3, 2009
The head of Google's China operations, Kai-Fu Lee, resigns. He says he has raised $115 million to start a company that would finance high-tech start-ups in China.
Jan. 12, 2010
Google says it will stop cooperating with Chinese Internet censorship and consider shutting down its operations in the country altogether, citing assaults from hackers on its computer systems and China's attempts to "limit free speech on the Web."
March 22, 2010
Google says it will close its China-based Web site and instead direct Chinese users to an uncensored version of its service, which may get blocked in the country.