Talks with China over censorship have got Google nowhere fast and the search engine giant is now “99.9%” certain to shut its Chinese search engine, according to weekend reports. But what will its China exit mean for other search brands and furthermore, search advertising?

 If there were a set of traffic lights blocking Google competitors wishing to expand in China with a red light, it’d now turn green – or at least yellow.

There are more than 380 million internet users in China and the search engine market is now estimated to be worth over $1.5 billion. And it’s still growing! At a phenomenal rate, actually. From 2006 to 2010, it is expected to see a compound annual growth in excess of 30%.

But the Chinese internet market is still relatively young, and as the rest of the nation starts to get online, the size of its search market is set to rocket. Is it really a good idea for Google to get out?

Google seems to be holding its search engine to ransom. It’s annoyed it can’t get what it wants, but what Google is perhaps failing to realise is, if it exits China, it will lose a massive slice of the potential search marketing pie and could open the road for Yahoo to overtake it in the usage stakes.

Yahoo and Microsoft are on the path of assault and Bing is already doing incredibly well. Imagine if it goes into China and cleans up, picking up where Google left off. There’s a whole search worked out there, censorship or not, there’ll now be a huge gap in the search market in China.

Even though Yahoo has been present in China for some time, it has never enjoyed the popularity it would like – but China remains somewhat of an untapped market in an economy that is crying out for reform and change.

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