Google cleans up its image

Google's decision to redirect Chinese Google users to the company's Hong Kong web site was motivated by business concerns but may also serve to improve the company's image, writes the Neue Zürcher Zeitung: "Apart from the fact that in China too there are ways to get around Internet censorship, the whole Google dispute is above all helping the American company. Since its launch on the Chinese market and its cooperation with the Beijing censors the latter has had to contend with quite substantial image problems. Google was obviously no longer willing to pay such a high price in terms of loss of esteem for the sake of a barely 30 percent share of a market that owing to discrimination. And the dominant position of inner-Chinese competitor Baidu showed little potential for expansion. Now Google can at least wipe itself clean of the stain of collaborating with the Beijing censorship. The Chinese regime uses the dispute as an opportunity to make nationalist statements."

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