Google has stopped distributing advertisements in China for two websites that review anti-censorship software, in a move that critics consider signals the US tech giant’s efforts to curry favour with Beijing.
Last week, VPNMentor, a company that reviews virtual private network services that allow users to bypass China’s internet controls and avoid surveillance, said that Google had refused to sell its adverts to Chinese users, after doing so for more than two years.
On Wednesday, Top10VPN, another review site, said it had received the same notice after advertising with Google for several months.
VPNMentor posted a screenshot of an email to Twitter, appearing to be from Google, saying “it is currently Google policy to disallowed [sic] promoting VPN services in China, due to the local legal restrictions”.
Foreign businesses and visitors to China, as well as local citizens, rely on VPNs to access the global internet, including platforms such as Google and Facebook, which are blocked by China’s “Great Firewall” of internet controls. Google runs adverts on third-party websites in China.
Google said it had “longstanding policies prohibiting ads in our network for private servers, in countries where such servers are illegal”, adding that bans on VPN adverts in China had been in place for several years.
On Friday, China’s market regulator demanded that internet platforms step up their censorship of adverts.
However, there is no blanket ban on selling VPNs in China. Chinese regulators issued a notice in 2017 stating that VPN providers would need to be licensed in order to operate in China. Regulators told the Financial Times last year that the situation was “complex” and that they were still “researching” how to apply the measures.
Charlie Smith of GreatFire, a censorship monitoring organisation, criticised Google’s blunt action in relation to VPNMentor and Top10VPN as being too broad. He said: “There are legally registered VPNs operating in China, so either Google has not kept up to date with local regulations or they are overstepping their boundaries.”
David Kaye, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, said that Google’s move “deprived [Chinese users] of the choice to find uncensored material”.
“If Google is in the business of expanding access to information, why do they not conceive of their business in those terms in China?” he asked.
Mr Kaye also questioned whether Google had researched the legal status of the review sites, or “sought ways to ameliorate the impact on expression” before deciding to enforce a ban against them as regards all VPN-related adverts.
Mark Natkin of Marbridge Consulting, a tech research group in Beijing, said that Google “may be trying to comply with the spirit of the regulation”.
“Google’s situation is that, based on their past decisions in China, they have a more delicate relationship with the Chinese authorities and so may feel compelled to make additional efforts to curry favour and get back in the good graces to get approval to re-enter the market,” he added.
Lee Jyh-An, associate professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, agreed, saying the move was a “signal to show kindness towards the Chinese government”.
“Google have withdrawn from China before and that scene wasn’t pleasant, so if they want to come back again, they have to show a stronger ‘kindness’ signal.”
Google closed its China search engine in 2010 after suffering cyber attacks and periodic blocks from the government. The company announced that it was no longer willing to censor search results, devastating its relationship with Beijing at the time.
Google said its decision to block VPNMentor’s adverts was “completely unrelated” to trying to re-enter China.
“As we’ve said for many months, we have no plans to launch Search in China and there is no work being undertaken on such a project,” the company added, referring to its previously leaked “Dragonfly” plan to bring a censored Google Search back to China, which it has indicated it is not pursuing.
