Chinese partners warn Google to sort itself out

CHINESE COMPANIES selling ad space on Google's search pages in the glorious Peoples Republic have demanded that it needs to sort out whether it's staying in China, or else.

According to Reuters, Google has received and is reviewing a letter from angry partners that are becoming annoyed with the search giant for not making a firm decision on what it is actually going to do.

The letter says that Google's dawdling has cut business, scared off workers and made investments difficult. It said, "We see a constant stream of information but cannot predict the future, we see business sliding but there's nothing we can do."

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt has said that he hopes to have an outcome soon from talks with the Chinese over an uncensored search engine, but it is pretty doubtful that the Chinese Communist Party will allow it, considering that there are other alternatives like Baidu for people to use.

For a long time Google was happy to follow the rules of a country with an appalling human rights record that demanded it censor its search results, but the trigger for the company's change in policy was supposedly evidence of a concerted cyber attack against US companies including Google itself and Chinese human rights activists that allegedly was traced to origins within China.

Websites like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are already blocked in China, but any decision to cut Google's operations in China will have big implications for its business there.

It's uncertain, however, that anything Google decides will be likely to spur other companies like Microsoft and Yahoo to consider their own positions about continuing to do business in China.

Whether or not Google does the right thing or money talks in the end, its Chinese business partners want to know soon. µ