The future of Google Maps, the company's online mapping service,
may be in jeopardy as the company reportedly has yet to file the
required application with the Chinese government to keep the
service running, and the deadline is tomorrow.
China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping confirmed that it
has not received an application from Google for a license
for Google Maps, according to Bloomberg and other sources.
If tomorrow's deadline passes, and a license application
still has not been received, the bureau said that the service would
face "administrative actions" by July 1.
Google has not responded to a request for comment.
Bloomberg, however, had the following statement from the
company: "We are examining the regulations to understand their
impact on our maps products in China."
China's potential actions against Google Maps are part of the
country's overall effort to crack down on "illegal" online mapping
services in light of their ability to reveal
"sensitive and confidential" information,
according to China's state-run news agency Xinhua.
Such a crackdown would extend to unapproved online mapping
sites, potentially leading to their shutdown.
China announced last spring that it would start
requiring licenses for online mapping services,
already putting the future of Google Maps in question.
As of the middle of February, China has given
licenses to 105 Web sites that provide online mapping in the
country, including Baidu, Sina, Nokia, and China Mobile,
Xinhua said.
Always tenuous, Google's relationship with China took
another bad turn last week when the search giant accused
Beijing of interfering with the operations of Gmail.
The company also just suffered a blow to its overall
market in China as Sina, the country's biggest Internet portal,
said yesterday that it has replaced Google's search
engine on its various Web sites with its own, according to AFP.
