Still, Google China's share of the market was not negligible. The article above claimed it had only just dipped under 30%; StatCounter (accurately or not) claims Google China was still above 40% in early 2010: https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/ch...
Either way, that's a significant fraction, more than Bing has ever had in the US. Not to mention the size of the Chinese market or future growth potential (consider what Google could have done with Android in China).
Google could have responded to the pressure by seeking to appease the Chinese government. Other companies have done so, many profitably. Google did not.
for that 30% claimed market share, a large % of them had to search "google" in Baidu to get to google.com because they didn't know how to spell the word google.
It's true that before its departure Google China was losing market share to Baidu, reportedly at least in part due to government throttling which slowed Google's service to a crawl: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/6143553...
Still, Google China's share of the market was not negligible. The article above claimed it had only just dipped under 30%; StatCounter (accurately or not) claims Google China was still above 40% in early 2010: https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/ch...
Either way, that's a significant fraction, more than Bing has ever had in the US. Not to mention the size of the Chinese market or future growth potential (consider what Google could have done with Android in China).
Google could have responded to the pressure by seeking to appease the Chinese government. Other companies have done so, many profitably. Google did not.