A Chinese newspaper has announced that Google may cease its China operations as early as April 2010. The internet search engine has had a wide range of issues with the Chinese authorities over the last few months, and although it was widely reported that Google would leave China at the start of the year, they have denied it to this point.

Google leaving China in April?

Google made an announcement at the start of the year, saying that it was no longer prepared to be subject to censorship by the government, after a widely reported cyber-attack on several of its online properties.

“I have received information that Google will leave China on April 10, but this information has not at present been confirmed by Google,” an unnamed spokesman was reported as saying.

Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, has recently stated that he was hopeful that a resolution could be found with the government with regard to allowing them to operate in the country without having to filter its results – but this is thought to be almost impossible.

A number of websites in China are currently blocked at an infrastructure level by the government, including Facebook, Youtube and a number of blogs. It is unclear what the effect of a Google pullout would have on the services which millions of people in the country use on a daily basis.

Courtesy – http://www.techreviewsandnews.com