Washington DC:
A spokesperson for the US State Department reacted on Thursday to China's unwillingness to loosen its control over Internet search results, pushing Google Inc. closer to the brink of closing up shop and leaving the country.
P J Crowley, US State Department Spokesperson, said that they had been in discussions with officials from the Chinese Embassy and labelled the issue as "serious."
" The incident raises questions about both internet freedom and security of the internet in China and we've asked them for an explanation," he added.
Crowley while they have an extensive relationship with China from time to time disagreements come up and Washington have raised their concerns with the Chinese government regarding internet freedom.
In the Chinese government's first official statement since Google issued its ultimatum two days earlier, a Chinese official endorsed the country's current rules governing Internet content.
Google is still hoping that it can persuade the Chinese government to agree to changes that would enable its China-based search engine to show uncensored search results.
If a compromise can not be worked out within the next few weeks, the company intends to shut down its search engine at Google.cn and pull out of China completely. Google says it hasn't set a deadline for breaking the impasse.
Images from the 1989 Tianamen Square cropped up in Google.cn's search results on Thursday, leading some Web surfers to conclude that Google had begun to defy the government's rules requiring censorship of many politically sensitive issues.
Google is prepared to abandon the Internet's biggest market because of computer-hacking attacks that pried into the e-mail accounts of human-rights activists protesting the Chinese government's policies. The assault also hit at least 20 other publicly traded companies, according to Google.
The US State Department stepped in and tried to get some answers from Chinese on Thursday.
David Shear, a deputy assistant secretary of state who deals with China, met over lunch with a high-ranking representative of China's US Embassy.
The Chinese ambassador to the United States is likely to be summoned to the State Department in the coming days, agency officials said. Outside Google's China offices, people continued to mourn the possible loss of the world's most popular search engine.
Some people even poured small glasses of liquor, a Chinese funeral ritual.
A Google departure could give a boost to local rival Baidu Inc., allowing it to pick up Google users and advertisers, analysts said.
Baidu, launched in 2000, is a standout in the global search industry - a local competitor that beats the Internet search leader elsewhere around the world.
Baidu has 60 percent of China's search market and has held onto that despite Google's launch of a local site and its relentless efforts to tailor services to Chinese tastes.
Baidu's stock has surged 20 percent since Google announced its potential departure from China.
Meanwhile, Google's stock is down by just 63 cents in the two trading days since the announcement, closing on Thursday at 589.85 US dollars.