Google Drive and Docs in China?

The company has quietly been testing the waters with different products in China

Tencent

Andrew Barclay

Published: 7:16pm, 6 Aug 2018

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This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Google is planning to launch its Drive and Docs products in China, adding to a growing list of services it wants to offer in the world’s biggest internet market.

Bloomberg reports that the company has been in talks with Chinese internet giant Tencent and others to help it deliver those services through Chinese-based servers, according to people familiar with the situation.

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Under Chinese law, data must be held on domestically-run servers.

The move would mark quite a shift for Google, which has largely been absent from China since it pulled its search engine in 2010.

Just last week it was also reported the company is considering launching a censored version of its search app there.

But the absence of its search engine in the country doesn’t mean the company hasn’t been making inroads there.

Earlier this year it opened an artificial intelligence research centre in Beijing.

It also hosted a competition that pitted its own AI technology against the world’s top human Go players.

It’s even launched its own mini-game on Tencent’s popular social network WeChat.

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