Google has announced in a statement that it is going to shut down its Google Shopping services in China. This has been decided by the company in a sudden decision and the reasons of this decision are still unknown. The Google stated the closure of shopping services in China in the following way;
“In order to better optimize resources, we have decided to close our shopping search services in China. The original intent of this project was to set up a bridge between consumers, retailers and traders. The impact of the product, however, did not meet our expectations. But we remain committed to helping Chinese businesses export their products to countries around the world and helping Chinese retailers use Google Shopping to reach consumers in the other markets. In the future, we will focus in in-app mobile advertising with AdMob, mobile and desktop display, and export oriented search advertising”.
During October, the Google also closed its Music search service in China after facing some problems. Google faced stiff competition in China by offering the Shopping service. The main competitor of the Google in China is Alibaba which has its own retail search service eTao. The main competitor of Google, the Yahoo, owns 23% stake in Alibaba.