【明報專訊】On 12 April 2006, Eric Emerson Schmidt (埃里克•施密特), then Chief Executive of Google, unveiled the Chinese name of the search engine — "谷歌". That, however, did not bode well for its endeavour to enter the China market.

Foundation of Google

Google was founded by Larry Page (拉里•佩奇) and Sergey Brin (謝爾蓋•布林) in 1998, when they were both PhD students at Stanford University (史丹福大學). It was privately owned until 19 August 2004, when it went public.

Originally based in Menlo Park, California, Google was moved to Mountain View in 2004. In 2015 it became a subsidiary (子公司) of Alphabet Inc following a reorganisation of interests.

The most popular search engine - and more

Google is, first of all, the world's most popular search engine (網絡搜尋器). In terms of usage, it far outstrips its rivals such as Microsoft Bing and Yahoo!. And there is a good reason for that. Google any word (ie. key in any word in Google), and results are brought to you in order of relevance, usefulness and importance. All this is possible by virtue of PageRank, an algorithm (算式) first developed by Larry Page.

But Google is more than a search engine. By virtue of innovation as well as acquisition (收購), it now encompasses a dazzling array of internet services that have become an integral (必需的) part of modern life. They include Gmail (an email service), Google Drive (a cloud storage service), Google Docs (productivity software), Google+ (a social networking service), Google Chrome (a web browser) and Google Photos (photo-editing software). It even owns Android, the immensely popular operation system (作業系統) for smartphones!

Google is frequently listed as one of the most influential companies on earth. As of 2013 it had 47,756 employees. It runs a staggering number of servers (伺服器) - more than one million. It handles more than 3 billion search queries and zips millions of YouTube videos to users every day.

Google (and other internet companies) and the China market

Google China, founded in 2005, is a subsidiary of Google. In 2006 the China-based "google.cn" search page was launched, but the results were subject to censorship by the Chinese government. Citing a Chinese-originated hacking attack on the company, Google announced in January 2010 it was no longer willing to be subject to censor searches in China. In March that year, Google started to redirect all search queries from "google.cn" to "google.com.hk" in Hong Kong. Some of Google's services, including Gmail, Google Web Search and YouTube remain inaccessible on the mainland.

Google's setbacks in the China market, where there are 668 million internet users (more than in any other market), are similar to those experienced by other internet conglomerates like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Dropbox. They are all blocked on the mainland. In fact, out of the top 1,000 websites in the world, 135 are blocked in China. To access these websites, Chinese netizens have to rely on Virtual Private Network (VPN) services to circumvent (繞過) the "Great Firewall of China" (nickname for the Chinese censorship system). The Chinese authorities, however, have recently cracked down on these VPN services as well.

Despite censorship on the mainland, many internet companies remain committed to entering the China market. Facebook is definitely one of the most determined. The social networking website has made little headway so far, but analysts believe, if it is to get the green light from the Chinese authorities, it will have to store its user data in China, partner with a Chinese company and embark on a massive scheme of self-censorship. It is also reported that Google has plans to return to China in the near future.