Google disables Google Translate in China, cites 'low usage'

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Due to low usage for the technology, Google has disabled the Google Translate service for Chinese users, ending a service - one of the last few - which was still operating on the mainland, according to a company representative. 

"We have discontinued Google Translate in mainland China due to low usage," the representative said, according to Bloomberg.

The service now redirects Google Translate users to its page registered in Hong Kong instead of the mainland. 

Bloomberg reported that the Google search engine stopped working in 2010 due to governmental censorship of the internet, but the translation feature has been in effect since 2017 in the country. 

Google Translate in China, in August, reported 53.5 million visits from computer and mobile users altogether, according to Similarweb, a web analytics platform. 

Chinese users went to social media to criticize the move: "You can't use this and you can't use that, having to read foreign documents every day," one user wrote on Chinese question-and-answer site Zhihu. 

"Now I don't know what to do."

This move could be part of the West-led economic and technological war on China.

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