Six years ago, Google’s co-founders yanked their search and ads businesses from mainland China.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai: ‘We want to be in China serving Chinese users’
But no word on when.
Their handpicked successor, Sundar Pichai, would like to come back.
At the Code Conference on Wednesday, the Google CEO offered his most candid public remarks on the country to date, centered on an obsession of his: Making Google products for everyone on the planet.
“I care about servicing users globally in every corner. Google is for everyone,” he said. “We want to be in China serving Chinese users.”
Right now, Google does provide some analytics and ads services for Chinese companies. But it doesn’t have search or its services on Android, the dominant mobile operating system in the country. That’s placed Google at a sizable disadvantage in the country.
Google is reportedly planning to bring its Play app store and some Android services to China. It’s unclear when — Google is likely waiting on government approval.
Pichai did not offer a timeline. Nor did he go into details of what concessions, if any, Google would need to make to government regulators to return.
“We’re being thoughtful about it,” he said.
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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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