• Bloomberg et al., Thursday, January 14, 2010 12:56 PM

Calling into question the gravity of Google's affront to Chinese law, the county's government and business community don't seem particularly concerned about the prospect of a Google-less China.

Chinese officials brushed off Google's threat, telling Bloomerberg: "effective guidance of public opinion on the Internet is an important way of protecting the security of online information"

Speaking with a group of Chinese entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, VentureBeat's Kim-Mai Cutler got a similar response. "Most thought that the Chinese government wouldn't budge on censorship and that Google's threat wouldn't have much of an impact on the local startup scene," wrote Cutler.

"Google is trying to escalate a business problem into a political issue," Jess Wu, Venture Partner at The Chinese Founders Fund, told Cutler. They want an angle so the U.S. government can get involved. They want nation-to-nation talks. Since no dot-coms have really succeeded in China, I actually think they've done a good job reaching at least 20 percent market share."

Even the U.S. government seems reluctant to involve itself in the whole matter, according to The Wall Street Journal. "U.S. government officials and business leaders were supportive but wary of taking sides in Google Inc.'s battle with China, a sign of the delicate tensions between the growing superpower and the West."

Were Google to leave China, analysts speculate that the rapid growth of the Chinese market means future lost revenues could be enormous.

Still, Google is presently a distant second to the Baidu search engine in China, and, according to estimates cited by eWeek on Wednesday, Google only derives 1% of its revenues from China -- or about $300 million.

Read the whole story at Bloomberg et al. »