Google Looks to Break Into China With a New YouTube Channel

A Chinese flag blows in the wind in front of Google Inc.’s offices in Beijing, China, June 2, 2011. Keith Bedford/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Google wants into China—one way or another.

The internet giant just launched a new Chinese-language YouTube channel to educate Chinese programmers on the ins and outs of various Google technologies, such as its Android mobile operating system and Compute Engine cloud computing service. The channel includes both new content and videos from Google’s English-language channel subtitled with Simplified Chinese captions.

The irony is that YouTube is officially blocked in China. So are the Android Play store and the Google search engine. And the company isn’t necessarily willing to play by local censorship rules. But it’s still looking for ways of bringing its services to more of China’s 1.35 billion people.

In appealing to developers, it could land a foothold in the company that could pay off in years to come. Developers versed in Google’s technologies today may turn to the tech giant in building the companies of tomorrow, and though things like the Play store and the Google search engine may remain blocked, cloud computing services like Compute Engine—which provide computing power for running websites and other software—may be another matter. Microsoft now offers its cloud computing service in China, though through a local partner.

Google has had a tumultuous relationship with the Chinese Government. From 2005 until early 2010, the company censored search results on Google China. But after an attempt to hack into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, widely blamed on the Chinese government, Google began re-routing its Chinese search engine through its Hong Kong site, allowing users to access uncensored search results. The Chinese government quickly moved to block Google’s search engine.

More recently, China has cracked down on the use of VPNs, making it much harder for Chinese citizens to circumvent the government’s filters. In addition to censorship, these filters also help protect companies like search engine Baidu from foreign competitors like Google.

But even as the Chinese government has made life difficult for Google’s search engine, some of the company’s other technologies have life in China. Android is the most popular smart phone operating system in the country, according to the South China Morning News —though most phones are not controlled by Google—and Google recently announced that Chinese developers can now sell their apps in the Play store, letting them to make money from users in countries where the store isn’t blocked.

Meanwhile, Google’s programming language Go is extraordinarily popular among developers in China based on data crunched by programmer Herman Schaaf. It’s with these folks—at the grassroots level—that Google could eventually gain some leverage.