> because the content you have left once you removed all the sites China bans didn't have many useful hits You mean non-Chinese content? Chinese users aren't i

> because the content you have left once you removed all the sites China bans didn't have many useful hits You mean non-Chinese content? Chinese users aren't interested in non-Chinese content by and large. English literacy is better now than it was when Google pulled out and it's still pretty bad. Dealing with the censorship is trivial. The problem was they couldn't compete on merits and got absolutely dunked by Baidu on search and maps (though there is a ton of competition in maps these days, namely Amap and Gaode Map but it was true when Google pulled out). Primarily because of localisation (because it's natively Chinese) and also because Baidu looks and works like the rest of the Chinese web. For similar reasons Yahoo is still huge in Japan. It looks and feels Japanese. Google does not. I really reject the idea that Google failed because of censorship. All of their Chinese competitors had the same restrictions and came out on top is all.