Due to low usage, Google Translate has withdrawn from mainland China!

Recently, many users reported that Google Translate could not be used normally in China. Subsequently, a Google spokesperson responded to foreign media via email, admitting that Google Translate had stopped providing services in mainland China. It is reported that this was due to low usage.

Yien found that the website translate.google.cn, which was supposed to provide the translation function, has been replaced by the Google search page, as shown in the figure below. This practice is consistent with the withdrawal of Google Search, Google Maps and other functions from mainland China.

As early as 2010, the tech giant Google had already withdrawn from the Chinese market, retaining only two services, Google Translate and Google Maps. However, in February 2020, Google Maps stopped serving in mainland China, and now the last service has also been suspended in China.

Many cross-border e-commerce sellers use Google Translate as the most frequently used translation tool. It is reported that Google Translate is a free service that supports translation of up to 133 languages. This translation tool uses traditional machine translation, and will perform a large amount of retrieval and speculation in the manually translated documents during the translation process to obtain the most appropriate translation results. Therefore, it is loved by many users. Surprisingly, the reason why Google Translate withdrew from mainland China was "too low usage rate."

However, some netizens said:

I kept using Google Translate, it was so sudden;

To be honest, I use Google Translate the most;

Of all the web translations I have used, Google is the best and most convenient;

I also use it every day, why is the usage rate so low?

I cried, my Google Translate ah woo woo woo;

So what should I do? The browser and Google translation software need to be connected to a VPN to work, which is too difficult for a researcher who has to read English literature all day long.

The low usage rate of Google Translate in China is understandable, because there are many translation tools in China, and Google faces many strong competitors, such as Youdao Translation, Tencent Translation, Baidu Translation, etc. Although these translation softwares have not won over Google Translate in all aspects, their localization functions and services are also very complete. Some netizens said, "The translation of WeChat and Baidu is not worse than Google", and Google Translate is at a competitive disadvantage in mainland China due to many reasons, so it is difficult to increase its usage rate.

For some long-term users of Google Translate, the withdrawal of Google Translate will inevitably leave many unfamiliar phenomena. Some users have already found alternatives and said they can try using deepl instead. In addition, many people are also worried that after Google Translate withdraws from mainland China, domestic translation software will start charging, saying that "the day when domestic translation software charges is not far away."

In short, the withdrawal of Google Translate from mainland China will definitely have varying degrees of impact on many sellers who are accustomed to using this tool.

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