Assuming a pay rate of $15K a year (very high by Chinese standards), that's only $10.5m in annual salary expense. This is less than 1% of Google's salary expense. Google has 1/4 of Baidu's market share. Baidu had $450m of sales in 2008. Assuming Google had 1/10 the Chinese 2008 revenues, that would amount to $45m, less than 1% of Google's 2008 revenues, but easily covering Google's $10.5m in salary expense. I think Google is bailing out because China might be a fast expanding market, but it remains a tiny market, with Baidu, the leading player in China, amounting to 3% of Google's total revenues.
“China might be a fast expanding market, but it remains a tiny market”
You might be right but google is turning this into a censorship issue as the reason for leaving...
They never gave a shit before about the issue since 2006 when they set up Google.cn for China..
Image is everything google wants to look like heroes...