Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.China's largest Internet portal Sina said Tuesday it has replaced Google's search service on its websites with its own technology, further denting the US giant's presence in the Asian nation.
"Our contract (with Google) ended this month and the whole websites are now using our own search technology," Liu Qi, a spokesman for Sina, told AFP, adding the Chinese firm no longer had any cooperative agreements with Google.
The US web giant has been losing search engine market share in China since January last year, when it said it was no longer willing to self-censor content to comply with government rules.
The company said it had suffered cyberattacks from China-based parties apparently intent on hacking into the Gmail accounts of rights activists.
The resulting row caused tensions to spike between China and the United States, and ended with Google automatically re-routing users of its mainland search engine to its uncensored site in Hong Kong.
The web giant has since tweaked the way it re-routes Internet users in order to renew its business licence in China, which has the world's largest online population, estimated at more than 450 million people.
But last week Google again accused China of interfering with its Gmail service, calling it "a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail".
China has denied any state involvement in both issues.
The disputes have hurt Google's business in China, with its Internet search market share dropping to 19.6 percent in the fourth quarter last year from 21.6 percent in the previous three months, Chinese Internet research firm Analysys International says.
Its local rival Baidu, meanwhile, represented 75.5 percent of China's online search market in the same period.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments