Chinese Ad Agencies Fuming over Google's Threat to Leave

Google China's headquarters in Beijing (EPA photo)

The first ripples of the advertising quake that can be caused by Google's leaving the Chinese market are starting to reverberate all over that country.

Twenty-seven Chinese ad agencies have sent a letter to Google requesting a meeting with the Internet giant to discuss "the commercial risks of their business move."  

The agencies, reportedly "in unbearable agony and anxiety" over the threatened departure, are complaining that they have been kept in the dark about the whole affair after Google denounced attacks originated in China that compromised its corporate servers.

Over the weekend, The Financial Times, quoting "a person familiar with [Google's] thinking," reported that the company is "99 percent certain" that it will abandon its China operations.

The Times also reports that the Chinese government shot back by stating that it is not prepared to weaken its immense censoring apparatus in exchange for Google to remain in that country.

Meantime, the Chinese ad agencies are in apparent panic.

NewStraitsTimes.com:

A copy of the letter was posted on the website of state-run China Central Television (CCTV).

“The only thing we can do is to wait — in unbearable agony and anxiety,” the agencies said in the letter.

“If Google tells us now that we, our clients, employees and investors have to bear the commercial risks of their business move... we absolutely cannot accept it!” they said.

Google China acknowledged they have received the letter and only added a laconic "we are reviewing it."

We sense in this tug of war Google would not be the only loser. When 27 Chinese ad agencies all at once proclaim the kind of economic catastrophe this move would trigger, the Beijing bosses also ought to be concerned that their Great Firewall is starting to burn their profits.

And we all know the softest part of a dictatorship is its pocket.