How Microsoft has run a Chinese version of Bing since 2009, helping Beijing maintain its Great Firewall; China accounted for 1.8% of Microsoft's sales in 2020

The company's search engine does good business in China, a market Google and Facebook abandoned years ago.

Bloomberg 2024-03-07 Ryan Gallagher

Context & Ripple Effects

Microsoft’s continued operation of Bing in China stands out against the retreat of Google and Facebook, while its China revenue share remained small in the cited 2020 figure. The story frames market access not as a standalone search-business decision but as participation in China’s information-control framework.

That trade-off sits alongside Microsoft’s earlier closure of LinkedIn in China while retaining Bing and cloud products and reports that Bing’s politically sensitive-name autofill was suppressed beyond China’s borders.

First-order effects

Bing’s China operation is directly tied to local censorship controls, making Microsoft a continuing commercial participant in a market its major US search and social peers left.
The report raises the stakes for Microsoft’s China-facing product governance: a relatively small sales market can still create material policy and reputational exposure.

Second-order effects

Microsoft’s remaining China services face closer scrutiny as a portfolio, rather than being assessed independently of Bing; the earlier LinkedIn exit makes that distinction more visible.
For rivals that have exited China, Bing’s presence illustrates the competitive trade-off between access to Chinese users and accepting compliance requirements that can shape product behavior.

Third-order effects

If multinational platforms continue to segment products by national information rules, internet services will become more jurisdiction-specific rather than globally uniform.
The enduring industry question is whether companies can ring-fence local compliance: the reported broader censorship of Bing’s translation service in China suggests scrutiny will extend across adjacent information products.

The trend: This is one data point in the fragmentation of global internet platforms as market access increasingly depends on country-specific content and product controls.

Discussion

@martijnrasser Martijn Rasser on x
“Microsoft accidentally applied the blacklist it uses for the Chinese version of Bing to the entire world, providing an unintended glimpse of how it works with Beijing to give Chinese users a sanitized view of the internet.” https://www.bloomberg.com/... via @BW
@rj_gallagher Ryan Gallagher on x
Bing is now the only US/Western search platform accessible on China's version of the internet, which is tightly controlled by its so-called “Great Firewall”. Google & Yahoo are now unavailable, as are social media sites like Facebook, Snapchat & X.
@rj_gallagher Ryan Gallagher on x
Microsoft said its Chinese version of Bing is “the least censored search engine” in the country & that it'd rather have a presence there than not. “We only censor a result in response to a narrow legal order that we conclude obligates us to do so,” said a company spokesman.
@rj_gallagher Ryan Gallagher on x
Current & former employees provided a candid insight into Microsoft's secretive Chinese operation. They revealed a sophisticated censorship system that utilises machine learning & is centered on an expanding blacklist of thousands of websites & phrases.
@rj_gallagher Ryan Gallagher on x
New: Inside Microsoft's Bing search engine in China, which is censoring information on human rights, democracy, climate change & much more to satisfy China's authoritarian government: https://www.bloomberg.com/...

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