There is an invitation form spreading around the Chinese internet community which states that Google will hold press release at 1 PM on December 18 (Beijing time). On this press release, Google will announce its return to China and Google China CEO Jony will explain its strategies in China after return.
But soon Google China public relation representative said this was a rumor. There is no plan for Google to hold press release next week in China. And there are some apparent suspicious parts apeearing on the invitation form.
- Google has changed its logo this September, but apparently the logo on the invitation form is an old logo
- There is no Jony who is the Google China CEO. There is only one Asia Pacific CEO Scott Beaumont who also charges Google China business.
In the second half of 2015, there is some news that Google may return China soon. The most convincing indication is that it is building a customized version of Google Play for Chinese market. People who are close to Google say that Google will follow some indirect path to return China.
Disregard the dispute between Chinese government and Google on sensitive content, Lots of Chinese people are happy to see that Google returns China since they are not happy with the service provided by China's largest search engine Baidu and they think that Google provides more valuable and accurate search results than Baidu. Also, many scholars and researchers in China want to use Google's service such as Google Scholar to get different research papers and some other documents. Many Chinese believe that Google can return China someday if Google agrees to obey the Chinese government's requirement on censoring its search results.
After quitting China in 2010, Google still has around 500 employees in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The server in Hong Kong is still running and can provide Chinese search results. The main Google business still exists in China is Google AdWords, it helps Chinese enterprises to deliver ads to promote their products overseas. People can access Google Translation and Google Earth now and then but not always.
Hope in the near future Chinese will find it's real that Google will hold press release to announce its return to China instead of seeing this kind of rumors flying around and disappointing people.
