Amid dispute, Google launches map service for holiday travellers
Google has launched a powerful map-searching service for the mainland's Lunar New Year travellers amid differences with Beijing over censorship which it has said could force it to quit the mainland market.
The new service is being promoted on Carnoc.com, the official civil aviation website, with detailed introductions and graphics.
The holiday transport service is based on a 2008 version Google launched for millions of passengers affected by heavy snow and ice which paralysed railways and stranded thousands of passengers in stations. That service provided information about the main transport routes in major cities and ticketing and weather updates.
This year's service combines schedules, prices, information on train and plane tickets, highway and weather updates and Google's China map services to provide a comprehensive database for travellers nationwide who are returning home. It is unclear when Google began preparations to launch the service.
About 210 million mainlanders are expected to travel to their hometowns for the Lunar New Year in the world's largest annual human migration. It is the only opportunity many people, including at least 150 million migrant workers, have for a family reunion. The number of travellers this year is expected to be 9.5 per cent higher than last year.
Commentators said it was unlikely the new service was a sign Beijing and Google had reconciled.
Beijing-based political columnist Mo Zhixu said that since Google's management did not show any sign of softening its stance against filtering results on its Chinese-language search engine google.cn, as required by law, officials were unlikely to be conciliatory.
'The bureaucratic mainland administration will work according to schedules,' he said. 'There is no way reconciliation can begin so soon - even before any negotiation sessions have formally taken place.' Google says it hopes to secure agreement from Beijing for unfiltered searches.
Mo said the new service could be the result of a contract signed earlier.
Another Beijing-based online commentator, Michael Anti, had a similar view. 'The dispute between Google and mainland authorities ultimately boils down to the issue of censorship of the searchable content online. Many localised services, such as the Chinese-language input method Google pinyin, China maps, ads and even MP3 are not affected.'
'No one wants to see Google pull out of China entirely as the search giant could not afford to lose China's market.
'Nor would China like to see its international image tarnished should that really happen.'
