Update [January 16, 2018 10:03:56]:Autonavi Maps said that according to relevant government policies, Autonavi Maps has no plans to further cooperate with Google Maps.
On Monday, according to Nikkei (Japan Economic News), Google will re-launch its map service in the Chinese mainland, eight years after Google Maps was last available in the Chinese mainland.
Google will launch a customized Google Maps service for the Chinese mainland, including a web version and a mobile app version.
When users try to use the navigation function in the Chinese version of Google Maps, they will automatically jump to the AutoNavi Maps app. Autonavi is a map service company owned by Alibaba Group. This means that the Chinese version of Google Maps will not support in-app navigation services, but will be provided by Autonavi navigation. This also opens a new era of cooperation between Google and local Chinese companies, and will cooperate in more areas in the future, such as artificial intelligence.
The re-launch of Google Maps in China by partnering with domestic companies also shows that Google’s China strategy is changing. At present, due to the Chinese government’s vigorous development of artificial intelligence technology, Google has done a good job in this area, such as driverless car technology. So, leaving aside the return of services such as search and video to China, Google and the Chinese government have begun to cooperate on the development of artificial intelligence.
Cooperation with the Chinese government in artificial intelligence will help Google attract a large number of Chinese AI talents, and it will also enable it to obtain a large amount of user data in cooperation with the government to develop its artificial intelligence technology, such as autonomous driving technology. At the end of last year, Google announced that it would establish a Google China AI center in Beijing to study artificial intelligence technology. According to Chinese media reports, the research and development center will be able to accommodate more than 300 people.
Earlier this month, Google invested in a Chinese mobile game streaming platform called Tentacle, which has 90 million registered users, three years after it last invested in a Chinese internet company. It is also the latest step in the search giant’s gradual return to China, although its search service is still not directly accessible in mainland China.
Google has been absent from China, the world’s largest smartphone market, since 2010, when it pulled most of its services out of the Chinese mainland after refusing to accept self-censorship of its search results. However, in March 2017, Google reintroduced its translation service in the Chinese mainland. The launch of the map service, one of Google’s best-known services, is believed to attract more Chinese users.
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