The tiff between Asia's largest economy and Google has been going on for quite some time. Google is not ready to play by China's stringent rules of Internet censorship and the Chinese government is not ready to make a concession for this Internet giant.
And now, the executive chairman of Alphabet Inc., which is Google's parent company, and a motley of Chinese government officials have collaborated on a summit in Wuzhen, where Google experts and local academia would exchange knowledge, but the centre of attraction will remain DeepMind's yet undefeated Alpha Go system and its match with Ke Jie in the game of Go, reported Bloomberg.
It is not that China is losing out because Google is not there, as Baidu Inc. has picked up the slack and is serving millions of Internet users, but needless to say, Google is, indeed, losing out on a key market. And now the tech giant is trying to make amends with an olive branch in its hand and get back to the territory.
As we know, Alpha Go had earlier managed to triumph over the 19 years old champion in this 2,500-year-old strategy board game but this evoked curiosity, which Google hopes would be good enough to get itself an entry in the Chinese market in the pretext of knowledge sharing.
While this may put Google at a better place among the Chinese situation by portraying that it has more to offer than what the local counterparts are capable of, on the other hand this may end up being a double edged sword and lead to further lock down as Chinese government may try to create their own AI counterpart of the system than relying on a foreign entity that has its base outside China's control.
There is more at stake for Google than China, as the country already has a healthy eco-system of technological counterparts to suit its needs. Recent reports also cited that it would be developing its own online Wikipedia to substantiate the heavily censored Wikipedia, which is allowed in the country at this moment.
