Quick Response (QR) code as invitation code was required to enter Google’s Creative Sandbox show at the venue, 800 Show:

Creative Sandbox’s venue map:

Google Analytics offers multi-channel funnel to track assisted conversions alongside goals/conversions:

Chrome, Google’s browser:

Google Pluses on World Map:

Google+ Huddle:

Google Search’s “Watch this Space”:

More on Google Search’s “Watch this Space”:

The live band at the stage:

Google’s Bar offers drinks and alcohol:

Glass of different colors on Google’s Bar table:

The rest area by Youtube:

The 10-pin bowling game:

The maze games:

Most part of the landing page of Google.cn remains an image, except the three links to Google Music Search, Google Translate and Google Product Search.

Less than a week ago, Google has stopped redirecting Google’s China web search home page Google.cn to Google.com.hk and has started returning users who visited www.Google.cn to Google China’s new home page, which did not offer any links to other Google services/tools:

For Google China users who prefer entering URLs directly through the address bars of Internet browsers, try G.cn and you will be redirected to www.Google.cn.

www.Google.cn landing page

In March 2010, Google was to exit China and end Chinese operations. Then, Google China redirected web searches to Google.com.hk and closed Google.cn officially.

www.Google.cn returns to Chinese web users as a landing page with a large image. Wherever you click while on www.Google.cn, it redirects you to Google’s Hong Kong web search home page, www.Google.com.hk.

Google.com.hk was originally customized for Hong Kong’s Internet users with Traditional Chinese language homepage and interface. Google has set up three different language versions of Google.com.hk for Internet users residing in Mainland China from legally accessing Google’s web search.

Google Hong Kong Chinese Simplified Language

A simplified Chinese language Google.com.hk was added for Mainland Chinese users, in which access to Google.cn within China is by default redirected to this homepage.

Google Hong Kong Chinese Traditional Language

The original default homepage available to Hong Kong’s Google users.

Google Hong Kong English Language

An English English language Google.com.hk is made available to the fast growing number of non-Chinese speaking users residing in China.

Google created much news on China exit, censorship compliance, workaround to run Chinese operations:

• Google.cn shuts down but Google isn’t ready to leave by keeping R&D and sales operations in China.
• Google shuts China web search site in dispute over Chinese censorship.
• Google creates legal workaround to bypass Chinese censorship by redirecting Google.cn to the Hong Kong web search site.
• US government expresses disappointment after Google and China could not make a win-win deal.
• Chinese government accuses Google’s decision for not complying with China’s Internet censorship is wrong.

How Google Censorship Works

Google’s search algorithm is able to exclude web materials from appearing to users within search results. Google censors organic search results:

• For quality reasons – Google removes sites that “spam” the search engine.
• To comply with different local government laws – Google applies different levels of censorship to Google’s search engines in different countries.

Google’s censorship algorithm consists of global censorship and local censorship. Google often keeps the “removed” web material in the search engine’s index and uses the post-processing to remove web materials from search results showing to users.

What Search Results Are Being Censored on Google.cn?

In 2006, Blogoscoped researched and compiled a list of censored search terms in China:

• Words Returning Censored Google Results
• Censored Searches on Google.cn
• Google Images Censors Too in China

Impact on Google’s China Exit

Despite all the contributions that Google has made to Chinese Internet users, Google is to exit China and shut down Chinese search engine Google.cn.

• Google’s China Internet license may expire this month, however, the exit can possibly slow down Chinese Internet’s technology development.
• Chinese government demands Google to obey censorship laws no matter what Google’s decisions will be, however, Google says it’s still censoring China’s web site.
• Google’s Chinese ad partners urge the search engine to disclose future plans and set up compensations.
• Google’s China exit will hinder other Internet companies/technologies from entering the Chinese market and reaching Internet users in China – For example, Twitter, Google Buzz’s microblogging rival, may think twice before taking its business to China.
• Google’s exit may open up opportunities for Microsoft in China.

Google China’s Exit Speculations

Google’s latest exit signs in March’s news include:

• Google Denies “Exit China” Rumor
• Google Says China Talks Continue, But Pullout Signs Grow
• Google China on Brink of Withdrawing
• China Warns Google to Comply with Censorship Laws
• Google Advertisers Urged to Defect on Speculation of China Exit
• China Issues Warning to Major Partners of Google

Google’s Contribution to Chinese Internet

For Chinese Internet, Google offers Adwords, a paid search auction system for Chinese advertisers to reach hundreds of thousands of target audience worldwide, and Adsense, an online ad publishing system, for Chinese webmasters with web sites. Google SEM tools enables Chinese search engine marketers to sell their products/services through Google’s search network and content network.

Other free and irreplaceable Google tools that have been proved useful by Chinese Internet users, include:

• Google Reader – An RSS reader that allows subscriptions to RSS feeds
• Gmail – Google’s email service
• Google Buzz – Microblogging tool/service that is built around Google Profiles, Gmail, and Google Reader, and that have more than sufficient features/functions to replace Twitter
• Google Maps – Online maps service
• Google Documents – Online office software with Word, Excel and PowerPoint capabilities
• Google Website Translator – Website translation tool

Can Baidu Replace Google?

As Google will not be censoring Chinese search results, the biggest impact falls on Chinese websites that reside in China and are currently using Google’s search box as the default search function. They have 3 major options:

• Replace the “Powered by Google Search” with Baidu’s search box.
• Continue using Google’s search box, but apply “rules” to filter sensitive search results.
• Build their own search engines.

The “Show More Results” links are also available within the search engine result pages of the chinese version of Google (www.google.cn or G.cn).

After clicking on the “plus” sign of the “Show More Results” link, it expands into 5 additional and relevant search results.

After expansion, a single domain can have up to 7 links in total within Google’s organic results.

Google China’s Music Search offers a song screener for those of you who do not have any specific songs of choice in mind. The song screener really looks like “bubble” tag clouds. Using the right side menu, you can fine-tune the quality of the sound, select the type of artists, and so on.

Pointing your mouse to one of the bubbles, you will be shown several options: to play song, to download and more.

Once you click on the play song online button, your song player will pop up. All the songs you have previously played online always appear under the “My Music” folder.

Besides songs in Chinese, songs in other languages such as English, Japanese and Korean are also available. However, some of the songs can only be played online and have no MP3 available for download.

Google’s music search is a free service only for users reside in Mainland China. If you reside outside of China, or your IP address appears to be outside of China, you will have no access to this free service.

Baidu has been hosting a similar MP3 search for many years.

At the moment Google’s music search only provides limited number of songs from 4 record labels (EMI, Universal, Warner and Sony), while Baidu already has over hundreds of millions of songs available for download. Also, a search on Baidu’s MP3 search gives you multiple download links of the same song. Different file formats (e.g. mp3, wma) of the same songs are often available on Baidu.

Baidu’s music search has been one of the key search verticals in growing and retaining its large Chinese user base. This reflects on Baidu’s search market share in China for being over 60%, while Google only has about 26%.

How other blogs talked about Google’s Music Search:

• Google China Signs Big Music For Free MP3 Search Engine – Techcrunch

Previously, Google did launch its own daohang (or startup page of website links), but it is believed Google has not been able to leverage from it. However this time, it is believed that Google will leverage from placing Adwords contextual ads or syndicating Adwords search ads on 265.com.

Google’s biggest Chinese search engine competitor, Baidu.com, previously bought a similar site, www.Hao123.com, only for its high traffic volume. Hao123.com once ranked as the 25th of the highest traffic volume site in the world. At the time of Baidu’s acquisition, Chinese users were mostly very immature when using the Internet and had to rely on daphang type of sites to find websites.

Baidu also has its search box placed on a prominent position of Hao123.com. It seems like Google still has a long way to go, for understanding the nature and behavior of China’s web users.

By the way, it says there are still 366 days to go.

Other official Google logos:

• Google Logo Fifa World Cup 2006
• Google Logo China’s national day 2006

The Standard version:

The Text-only version:

The Image-intensive version:

On Daohang’s homepage has many outbound links pointing to useful Chinese portals, search engines and websites, including Google’s Chinese search rival Baidu, which owns www.Hao123.com, China’s most visited web directory site.

Besides the main section of outgoing links to major Chinese sites, other sites are grouped into 6 sections.

• Forum communities
• Music
• News
• Blogs
• Online games
• Chinese literature

This move was made probably because Google has realized the importance of product localization in China. It makes sense to provide such a localized product as the majority of Chinese Internet users still prefer visiting fully-content-packed portals than clean sites with loads of white space.

Edited:

Daohang.Google.cn has been redirected to Google’s 265.com which is the new Chinese web directory site / start page.

Google was once considered a potential acquirer of Baidu and is believed to make a 12-fold return on its $5 million investment in June 2004. At the time of the August 2005 IPO, Google’s stake represented 2.6% of Baidu’s shares.

Baidu is Google’s biggest Chinese search engine rival in China. Google, a distant number two in China’s Internet search industry, has subsequently moved to establish operations in China and competes with Baidu. However, Baidu commands the same dominant position in China that Google does in many other countries.