Google China has ditched their Guge logo and retracted to their well known "Google" logo. 10 days ago China Tech Stories already noticed this but at that time it seemed to be a technical glitch as the Guge logo reappeared. The latest cached version of Google.cn is from 2 October 2006 and still shows the Guge logo.

It's been gone again now for several days and probably safe to say this time it is for good.

Google launched Google.cn in April 2006 and called it Guge, meaning Harvest Song. The Chinese Google version is officially sanctioned by the Chinese government as can be seen by the ICP license it carries on the homepage. Searches on Google.cn are censored for terms deemed "sensitive".

Chinese Internet users showed a lukewarm response to Guge, if aware at all there was such a new name.

According to a recent survey by the China Internet Marketing Network Information Center 72.6% (62.8% of the users whose first choice is Google) of the interviewed users still weren't able to tell you the Chinese name of Google. The same survey, as well as a similar survey by China IntelliConsulting (CIC) indicated also that Google lost 8% or more market share.

Some domain "name" confusion stays. The domains Guge.cn, Guge.com.cn and Guge.com now all re-direct to the Chinese language (uncensored) version of Google.com.

Searching for Guge.cn on Google.cn or Google.com results in the suggestion "Did you mean: Google.cn".

Source:佚名