Google lost nothing. China never had any intention of allowing Google to become dominant in China. That was apparent from day one and comports perfectly with their explicitly stated and demonstrated agenda.

Agreed. When the explicit goal of arbitrarily changed rules are "We'll screw you in favor of a local competitor", why would you choose to play?

Either you are successful, and then the rules are changed to disadvantage you further. Or you're unsuccessful because of the rules. Lose / lose.

Or you lose because you lose fair and square. But you're right, either way you can't win.

>who are going to end up being a global competitor

They already demonstrated they cannot compete without help from the government. It's an inferior product that can only succeed because the better competitors are banned. Kind of like iPhone default browser.

To be fair, they'd more or less already lost the entire Chinese market to Baidu before they left anyway (they had ~15% marketshare or something).

Anecdote...my Chinese friends have said Google was poor for Chinese language searches. Might explain the 15% market share.

China was never going to be Google's to win in the first place based on their refusal to censor searches. In 2010 Google had 36% of the search market in China[1], so I imagine that "the general population" did care.

Also I'm pretty that Google isn't a nobody in "The East", The East is much more than just mainland China.

[1] https://www.slideshare.net/anksiitk/googles-negotiations-wit...

Apple will loose in China because of blocking these apps as well this will be another reason to not buy Apple for many.

I don't understand what you're saying. The alternative is not doing business in China at all, how would they sell more phones in China by getting out of the Chinese market, vs staying in China and complying with the government's demands? I'm very curious about what your market research indicates, because it sounds like a contradiction.

I think what xbmcuser is saying is that Apple is screwed either way: don't pull the apps and be kicked out of China altogether, or pull the apps and lose a competitive advantage. Not that Apple would lose _more_ this way, simply that they still lose.

Yeah that's what I meant either way Apple is going to loose it stays in China or not. They already stopped weechat Payments etc now they are stopping vpn apps so another reason for people in china not to use Apple. I bet in a few years or so China will make using foreign phones about national pride once that happens all other phone manufacturers including Apple will be sidelined.