What would happen if Google disappeared from China? In the wake of the hack originating in China and the subsequent threats by Google to leave China if uncensored results were not allowed, people started wondering what life would be like in a country without Google.
A survey of 784 scientists revealed that scientific research in China could be drastically affected if Google became inaccessible. According to Nature News:
…more than three-quarters said they use Google as the primary search engine for their research.
More than 80% use the search engine to find academic papers; close to 60% use it to get information about scientific discoveries or other scientists’ research programmes; and one-third use it to find science-policy and funding news. They also rely heavily on other Google products: more than half use Google Scholar, for example, and Google’s mapping and e-mail applications are also popular.
According to Nature, non scientists are perfectly happy with Baidu, and don’t care of Google goes missing – but scientists say that such a loss would be crippling:
Indeed, 84% of the scientists who responded to Nature’s survey say that losing Google would “somewhat or significantly” hamper their research; 78% say that international collaborations would be affected to the same degree. Scientists in the 25–34-year age range were most likely to say that losing Google would “significantly” — rather than “somewhat” — hamper their research.
The furor around Google and China has died down slightly in light of other, more recent events, but the Wall Street Journal reports:
Google and Chinese officials will resume talks about whether the US firm can deliver unfiltered Internet search results in the world’s most populous country…
It was unclear whether any progress was being made in the talks, or whether Google would be forced to follow through on its January threat to shut down its Chinese-language search engine google.cn rather than bow to government censors.
Google launched the ultimatum over what it said were cyberattacks aimed at its source code and at the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists around the world.