Update September 30, 2022, 6:48 PM ET: A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch via email that the company has discontinued Google Translate in mainland China “due to low usage.” Perhaps there were ulterior motives, but it’s likely there’s some truth to the statement — in China, Google services usage is a sliver of that of homegrown tech giants like Baidu and Alibaba.
The original story follows.
Google appears to have disabled access to Google Translate in parts of China, redirecting visitors to the Hong Kong domain — which isn’t accessible from the mainland. According to users on Reddit and site archives viewed by TechCrunch, Google swapped the Google Translate interface at translate.google.cn with a generic Google Search page at some point within the last 24 hours.
The change is reportedly impacting the translation features of apps like KOReader, a document viewer, for China-based users, as well as Chrome’s built-in translation functionality. Google hasn’t responded to a request for comment; we’ll update this piece if we hear back.
Google has a long and complicated relationship with the Chinese government. In 2006, the company entered the Chinese market with a versi …
