After a five year absence, Google expects to return shortly to mainland China to sell mobile services, a move with ramifications for the future of Android and a host of Chinese companies.
As early as this fall, the company hopes to get Chinese government approval to distribute a special China version of its Google Play mobile app store for Android smartphones in the country, said people familiar with the plan. Google has extensive plans for how it will architect and run the store locally and has partnerships in place with specific Chinese companies to do so.
Google is prepping a special China app store for Android devices and extending its Android Wear software for wearable devices there. The moves will re-establish Google as an Internet services provider in mainland China that stores user data locally and complies with government censorship requirements. It marks a new chapter in Google’s relationship with China after it publicly feuded with the government in 2010, which some Googlers say was a big mistake.
from https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-nears-re-entry-to-mainland-china
