A group of Chinese college students hold a candlelight vigil outside Google’s head office in Beijing on March 23. The placards say “We Love Google.” (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Associated Press | China issued a blistering public attack against Google on Wednesday and appeared to quietly begin getting businesses to abandon the U.S. Internet giant after it moved its controversial Chinese search engine offshore.

The critical remarks in a high-profile Communist Party newspaper, coupled with souring business deals, underscored Beijing’s determination to settle scores with Google after a public two-month dispute over stringent Chinese censorship policies. By challenging the often tetchy government, Google appears to have violated an unspoken rule of doing business in China, especially in the Internet industry, whose control Beijing sees as crucial to maintaining its authoritarian rule.

“Everybody in the Internet space operates under the good graces of the government, and if the government’s not happy with your partner, you probably are going to have to change,” said T.R. Harrington, founder and CEO of Shanghai-based Darwin Marketing, which specializes in advertising for China’s search engine market. “There’s no upside in China, there’s only downside.”

Signs quickly appeared that some ties forged over Google’s nearly four years operating in China were unraveling. Tianya.cn, a popular portal with 32 million registered users, said it was taking full control over social networking and question-and-answer services operated jointly with Google. A company spokesman declined to say if the government exerted pressure but said in a statement that the takeover was being done to “guarantee each product, normal business and good operations.”

Industry executives said that Google’s revenues were diving as companies shied away from placing new ads with the search engine. Deals with China’s top two mobile companies were also in doubt.

In Hong Kong, executives with China Unicom Ltd., the listed unit of one of China’s biggest mobile phone companies, hinted that it would shelve plans to offer two cell phones running Google’s Android program.

Asked by reporters if the deal to offer the phones made by Motorola and Samsung was still moving forward, China Unicom chairman Chang Xiaobing said the company was “open to cooperation with all the vendors but at the same time we need to abide by the laws and regulations in China.”