Google has partnered with the major record labels to launch a free online music service in China that is ad supported.
Initially the service will offer 350,000 songs from Warner Music, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment and 14 independent labels. The number of songs will increase to 1.1 million in the coming months, said Gary Chen, chief executive of Google's partner www.Top100.cn.
Remember all the discussion of China and its approach to the Internet that was heard around the Beijing Olympics? It seems that a lot of that type of coverage has slid into the background until recently. Apparently once Google gets involved these items become news again.
Internet users in China have been denied access to YouTube since late last night.
"Many people have a false impression that the Chinese government fears the Internet. In fact it is just the opposite," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.
Qin maintains that China's 300 million Internet users and 100 million blogs proved that "China's Internet is open enough, but also needs to be regulated by law in order to prevent the spread of harmful information and for national security."
Imagine any sort of sports team trying to come from behind in a 77-17 game. Now, imagine that the losing team's players get sidelined every so often for no apparent reason. This appears to be analogous to Google's situation as the search giant's properties were blocked again in China.
It's rather unlikely that Google will ever dominate the Chinese search market; Baidu isn't even close to being beat. Just the same, a new report indicates the American search company is at least moving in the right direction, gaining an amount of ground last year that could be viewed as impressive.
China is continuing its Internet crackdown on pornography in what it claims is an effort to protect youth from vulgarity while maintaining it has nothing to do with quieting political dissent.
The past year wasn't a bad one for the Chinese search market. A new report from Analysys International points to impressive growth in overall revenues, and the top two players both managed to increase their presence and popularity.
The number of Internet users in China rose nearly 42 percent by the end of 2008 from the previous year, putting its online population at 298 million, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).China continues to have the world's largest Internet population and 91 percent of users have broadband connections.
The Internet Society of China says the number of Chinese bloggers has swelled from 47 million at the end of November 2007 to more than 50 million by the end of 2008, a 6.38 percent increase.In March of 2008 China's online population surpassed that of the U.S. with 220 million Internet users. Figures from December 2008 show that China now has 290 million Internet users.
The Chinese New Year will begin on January 26th, and for some of the most prominent Internet companies in China, it's not shaping up to be a good one. Government officials are going after Google, Baidu, and Sina for distributing "vulgar" content.
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