Google ramping up mobile ad business in China
Despite its thorny history with the country, the search giant continues to pour money into China, trying to expand advertising operations in particular.
Google and China remain strange bedfellows, conducting business back and forth amid their dicey relations.
Speaking with Reuters today, Google's APAC (Asia-Pacific) President Daniel Alegre stressed the company's ongoing and deepening investments in China.
"We continue to have operations in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou; we have a thriving engineering centre, our sales infrastructure is something that we continue to grow, and the display, export and mobile opportunities are growing much faster than we had ever predicted."
Specifically, Alegre focused on the display and mobile ad businesses in China, which have experienced robust growth. He also sees Google's presence in China as a way for small and midsize businesses in the country to connect with overseas customers.
But though Google is floating more business China's way, its relationship with the Chinese government remains strained, Reuters noted.
A series of cyberattacks launched against Google in 2009 were believed by many to have originated from China, though the government strongly denied any involvement.
Google itself ran afoul of Beijing in 2010 when it stopped censoring results for its China-based search engine. The turmoil eventually forced the company to move its search engine to Hong Kong.