Google winds up two Chinese sites, ends partnership with Tianya

Internet search engine giant Google yesterday said that it will shut down its two online services in China and stop providing technical support to Chinese-language community website Tianya.

The announcement comes after the Chinese government extended Google's ICP licence on 9 July 2010 to continue its operations in the country. (See: Google gets China's nod to keep search page)

In a posting on its Chinese-language site on Tuesday, Google said that it will shut down a self-developed website ranking page and a lifestyle site in China.

Google said that the decision to close these two websites was due to "lower-than-expected demand," China Daily reported, citing a company statement.

Separately, the internet search firm  also said yesterday in a Chinese language blogpost that it will stop technical support to Chinese community site Tianya, in which it had acquired a stake in 2007.

After Google decided in March 2010 to withdraw from China over censorship issues, (See: Google seen exiting China as talks deadlock) Tianya.cn, which has 32 million registered users, and operates a social networking and forum website in China, said that it is taking over the social networking site Tianya Laiba and Tianya Wenda, a question-and-answer site.