On top of a profitable business in China, Google now has some ability to leverage some change in China. At the least, other corporations and governments will reconsider their relationships or expectations of China. Google had no influence before they opened google.cn, and as netcan pointed out, it wouldn't have been very useful to show sites not viewable through the Great Firewall anyway.

Business and an opportunity they didn't have before. Be charitable, this looks like a better outcome than had they stayed out of China altogether.

> a 1.32bn audience base

With 0.4bn actual base (total amount of Chinese Internet users), others were 'represented' by the Party.

Well,the decision could also have been made along with the fact that they don't have a large user base. I am guessing "Baidu" is still pretty popular there. I wonder if they would have done the same if they had a 60% penetration in the Chinese market.

EDIT:

Why am I being downmodded ? I thought we are supposed to have open discussions here. (I did find the actual google mkt share in the TC blog later, but I was presenting an alternative reason along with the fact that their site was attacked)

Additionally, they recruit heavily from China's top universities.