2012.2.18, as you might know, some foreign internet websites can not be visited in china, someone in china argues that this is why some internet companies won the battle with foreign companies, someone outside china asks whether the chinese internet companies won the battle in such an unfair way?
my short answer would be:No, at least not that much as you might think.
i’ll talk about the details in 2 parts:
1. which foreign websites were impacted in china? and when?
*google is surely impacted;as far as i can remember and according to some references i can find now, it started in 2003, Nov; at first we got some trouble when searching on google using some sensitive data;
*ebay/amazon is never impacted;
*facebook is impacted but not for the first 1 or 2 years;
2. among the big chinese internet companies, which gain benefit from the war?
the current biggest chinese companies are alibaba group tencent and baidu;
a. tencent
tencent started in 1998 and it’s starting to be very successful in 2000/2001.
in 2003 Nov [before GFW], it already has 200 million reg users;
http://baike.baidu.com/view/1535.htm
facebook started in 2005, and i think it was not blocked for first 2 or 3 years.
look at tencent’s data, in 2005 Feb, it has exceeded 10 million users online at the same time.
so it’s already very very successful.
b. alibaba
as said above, ebay and amaozn is never impacted in china. actually ebay has been operating in china earlier than taobao (part of alibaba group); however, taobao is more familiar with chinese culture and chinese internet users, and it soon gain more marketshare and now is surely the biggest one in china.
c. baidu
i would have to say that baidu indeed gain a lot during this process. however, even without this special treatment with google, baidu will still be successful; many of baidu’s visit comes from mp3 search, baidu tieba, baidu baike, and now it’s open api.
and someone still argues that if baidu have to face the competition with google in real world, baidu may even work out better search engine that it have now!
as a conclusion, i would say that companies like baidu indeed gain benefit, however others do not;
in order to win in a local market, you will have to understand local market deeply!
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