Beijing - Google agreed to comply with Chinese government censorship rules to fulfil its 'mission to serve all the people in the world,' Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt said Wednesday.
'The number 1 goal, by far, is to serve the Chinese citizen who wants information,' Schmidt told reporters at the launch of Google's new Chinese name.
Despite 'heavy criticism' from some US politicians and human-rights groups, Google's decision this year to self-censor the search results in its new Chinese domain was 'absolutely the right one,' he said.
'We at Google have a mission to serve all the people in the world,' Schmidt said in Beijing. 'We have made commitments to the Chinese government that we absolutely follow Chinese law.
'We don't have an alternative.'
Schmidt said it was 'very important' that Google technology and services are available in China despite the government's restrictions on content.
'There are many cases where certain information is not allowed by law or by custom, and we've made a decision that we have to respect the local law and local custom,' he said.
'It's not an option for us to broadly make available information that is illegal, inappropriate, immoral or what have you,' he said.
Schmidt launched the Chinese name Gu Ge on Wednesday, Google's only alternative name worldwide.
The two Chinese characters mean 'harvest song' and were chosen to promise a 'fruitful and productive search experience,' said Alan Wang of Google China.
Schmidt said Google estimated that China already has more internet users than any other country.
'The Americans will not be catching up,' he said.
The Chinese government estimated in January that China had about 111 million internet users and 700,000 portals at the end of last year.
But state media last week quoted Zhang Chaoyang, the CEO of the leading portal Sohu.com, as saying China could already have 150 million to 200 million internet users.
In contrast, the United States, which has been the country with the largest number of people online, had 154 million active users in January, according to Nielsen NetRating, an internet analyst.
Google attracts about 32 per cent of searches in China, where local rival Baidu leads the way with 56 per cent.
Google's decision to censor searches on its new google.cn domain attracted heavy criticism because it was the last major global search engine to do so.
Competitors such as Microsoft and Yahoo had already complied with Chinese censorship requirements.
On Sunday, 14 major Beijing-based portals issued a joint statement vowing to self-censor 'unhealthy' content, the official Xinhua news service said.
The portals signing the pledge included Sina.com, Sohu.com, Baidu.com and Yahoo China, the agency said.
The statement also 'urged internet portals to ban illegal, obscene and 'poor taste' photos, texts or audio messages on online forums, chatrooms and blogs,' it said.
China's internet police block hundreds of websites that are deemed politically sensitive and try to keep content broadly in line with the ruling Communist Party's ideology.
Tens of thousands of small internet cafes have been closed with the government favouring large chains that can be relied upon to monitor and control online activity.
Evidence from postings on websites has also been used in the conviction of several dissidents in recent years.
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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