A year after a public spat with Beijing over censorship, Google Inc. says its business with Chinese advertisers is growing even as the Internet giant's share of online searches in China plunges.
A major Chinese portal announced last week it would no longer use Google for search, compounding its rapid loss of market share since March last year when it closed its local search engine. The future of a Google map service that is a key part of its remaining appeal in China is in doubt.
Google's main presence in China has become its advertising sales offices, an unusual situation for a company that dominates the Internet elsewhere.
Google risked being completely shut out of China after it angered Beijing by announcing last January it no longer wanted to comply with Web censorship. It dodged that fate but without a flagship local online presence, analysts say Google will fall further behind Baidu Inc. as a search provider, while the controversy makes it hard to line up Chinese partners for other ventures.
"Chinese companies will think twice before they can have any kind of relationship with Google," said Edward Yu, president of Analysys International, a research firm in Beijing.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, says it see
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