After Google pulled out of China in 2010 due to the country’s censorship laws, the search giant is taking steps to return with the reintroduction of its Google Maps service.
When asked to bow down to China’s strict censorship laws in 2010, tech giant Google made the decision to pull its most popular services entirely from the country rather than comply. The company has now returned to the Chinese market – albeit in a tentative way – by reintroducing a localized version of Google Maps.
The China-specific version of Google Maps is available via desktop browsers and as an iOS app (China doesn’t have the Google Play Store, so there’s no Android version), which both allow users to navigate within the country, although with some caveats.
For example, due to its extended absence, Google hasn’t been collecting consistent mapping information, and as such, many of the streets don’t match the satellite information, or are missing altogether. Further to this, all turn-by-turn navigational features link out to the AutoNavi app, a service owned by Chinese internet monolith Alibaba.
At this stage, some of Google’s biggest tools are still absent from China – its search engine and YouTube are both unavailable in the local market, presumably because of the impact that the country’s censorship would have on these services in particular (so don’t expect to see a Chinese Google Home any time soon).
An article by Asian industry publication Nikkei cites Beijing’s interest in developing its AI capabilities as the potential reason for Google’s renewed cooperation, particularly when it comes to AI-driven self-driving technologies.
