Google Gave Up on China in 2008. Here's why it's heading back

[Commentary] When Google shut down its Chinese search engine in 2010, it gave up access to an enormous market. There are more than twice as many people on the Internet in China as there are residents in the US, and the number of Chinese Internet users is growing at a rate that far surpasses that of any other country. Google has plans to return to China in the near future, but why did it turn away from the country for so long? Censorship is why. Google effectively shut down its Chinese operations after it discovered a cyberattack from within the country that targeted it and dozens of other companies. And while investigating the attack, Google found that the Gmail accounts of a number of Chinese human-rights activists had been hacked.

Even as requests for takedowns increase every year, companies are engaging more and more with the governments that issue them. Take China: Google is hiring for dozens of positions there as it prepares its reentry, and is working toward an agreement to offer an app store for Android devices that would only include government-approved apps. In Pakistan, Google launched a localized version of YouTube recently that will adhere to local law, in a bid to get the government to lift a ban on the service. These expansions will allow Google access to a large number of Internet users, delivering them more information, and at the same time bolstering the company’s bottom line. But for the millions of Internet users in China, Pakistan, and other places where censorship is the norm, the tradeoff for getting to use new services remains the same: Easily accessible information comes at the cost of continued government control, filtered through American Internet companies.