The Chinese Ministry of Information and Industry agreed on Google's plans

Jun 20, 2007 13:31 GMT  ·  By

Although Google was regarded as a company that is restricted from China, the Mountain View company is finally allowed to step into the Asian market after the country's Ministry of Information and Industry agreed on Google's plans. According to Reuters, the search giant might begin offering news content to the local users even if the Chinese leader Baidu is also providing news headlines since January 2007.

"We have made very positive progress on the ICP (Internet content provider) application and have received preliminary approval," spokeswoman Marsha Wang said according to Reuters. "It's definitely a very positive move for Google. The license to provide content to audiences is critical to attract big advertisers, and also helps them try to have more content," added Edward Yu, president of Beijing-based research firm Analysys International.

It's a well know that fact that China is one of the largest IT markets, being targeted by most of the Internet giants including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. However, they were all rejected from the very beginning as the local leader Baidu attracted the majority of users with its Google-like solutions. The Sunnyvale company Yahoo was even more affected because it suffered several departures as well as an internal reorganization to revamp the company.

Google was also affected by almost 300 fake agents who were pretending to be hired by the Mountain View company and tried to sell Google's products. The Google officials were forced to make a short trip to China to resolve the issue because the search giant's image could be damaged and affect the company's revenues. Microsoft was among the firms that managed to face the competition and attract a considerable amount of customers. Obviously, Microsoft is the owner of the most popular operating system in the world so it's quite clear why the Redmond company is one of the successful names in China.