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Google's non-China sites

After complying with Chinese requirements that it censor its search engine results to those people reaching them in China, Google has won a business license to operate in the Communist state. Reuters reports from anonymous sources that the search giant now plans to open an office within the year. That office will include a sales team geared to attracting China's largest firms to the ways of search marketing.

China has just under 100 million internet users, the second largest national group of surfers behind the Americans.

Major online media players like Yahoo have long censored their results in order to prevent China from blocking their sites. This behavior has largely gone unnoted and may severely limit the positive dialog effect internet news and communications have had in the past. One of the greatest benefits of which internet advocates have boasted has been the medium's international mitigation of cultural biases and oppression - In essence, creating a common starting point from which different populations understand the news and reality of the day. But major American firms now regularly adapt their content to the nationalist and populist biases of major markets.

Google was criticized last year for starting the same practice. It was one of the main changes Google was able to show investors for its then-upcoming IPO that it was no longer a pie-eyed do-gooder firm, but rather one focused rather cynically on profit.