Mary Wilson
Well-known member
Yesterday 9:45AM
By Kyle Barr
Folks on the Chinese mainland looking to find occasionally garbled translations of foreign languages will be out of luck, as Google announced over the weekend it was pulling back on one of the few digital services it offered in the country.
Users on Reddit first noticed the service was down late Friday. Attempts to access Google Translate’s old mainland China address are now redirected to the Hong Kong site. Bloomberg noted that the Hong Kong version of the site isn’t accessible on the mainland without a VPN, marking Google’s move as an effective shutdown of the service.
Google made its translation feature available to China back in 2017, including a separate app that folks in China could download.
Google did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment, but the company did confirm with multiple outlets that it had discontinued the service in China “due to low usage.” TechCrunch, which initially reported on the news Friday, noted that the hubbub surrounding the upcoming National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which would mark the third term of the country’s President Xi Jingping, may have something to do with Google’s decision-making. Google China only owns a sub-2% slice of the online search pie in the country, according to Investopedia. ...
https://gizmodo.com/google-shuts-down-translate-services-in-mainland-china-1849608265
By Kyle Barr
Folks on the Chinese mainland looking to find occasionally garbled translations of foreign languages will be out of luck, as Google announced over the weekend it was pulling back on one of the few digital services it offered in the country.
Users on Reddit first noticed the service was down late Friday. Attempts to access Google Translate’s old mainland China address are now redirected to the Hong Kong site. Bloomberg noted that the Hong Kong version of the site isn’t accessible on the mainland without a VPN, marking Google’s move as an effective shutdown of the service.
Google made its translation feature available to China back in 2017, including a separate app that folks in China could download.
Google did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment, but the company did confirm with multiple outlets that it had discontinued the service in China “due to low usage.” TechCrunch, which initially reported on the news Friday, noted that the hubbub surrounding the upcoming National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which would mark the third term of the country’s President Xi Jingping, may have something to do with Google’s decision-making. Google China only owns a sub-2% slice of the online search pie in the country, according to Investopedia. ...
https://gizmodo.com/google-shuts-down-translate-services-in-mainland-china-1849608265
