History
Google China was founded in 2005 and was originally headed by Kai-Fu Lee, a former Microsoft executive and the founder in 1998 of Microsoft Research Asia. Microsoft sued Google and Kai-Fu Lee for the move, but reached a confidential settlement. Google's Beijing based office was initially located at NCI Tower.
In 2005, a Chinese-language interface was developed for the google.com website. In Jan 2006, Google launched its China-based google.cn search page with results subject to censorship by the Chinese government.
The Beijing office was moved to Tsinghua Science Park in early 2006. The newest office has been in use since September 2006. It is a 10-floor building located in Tsinghua Science Park, near the south gate of Tsinghua University.
In March 2009, China blocked access to Google's YouTube site due to footage showing Chinese security forces beating Tibetans; access to other Google online services is denied to users on an ad hoc basis.
On September 4, 2009, after four years leading Google China, Kai-Fu Lee announced his surprise departure to start a venture fund amid debate about the Chinese government's censorship policies and Google's decreasing share to rival Baidu.
Read more about this topic: Google China
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.”
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“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
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“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)