The government of mainland China has embarked on a crackdown on Search Engines. The effort started with a focus on Baidu but has now grown to include Google and other players. The crackdown includes a media campaign.

On December 11, the largest state TV brodcast a criticism of Baidu for running advertisements from non-licensed medical websites, accompanied by footage of what appeared to be the Google China site. For the previous month, the same TV channel had been criticizing Baidu, accusing it similarly of featuring ads from unlicensed medical sites as well as attacking Baidu's practice of mixing paid and organic search results. The attacks have driven down Baidu's stock price and its earnings forecasts.

Google said it had removed the ads cited in the TV broadcast and that it complied with Chinas laws regarding pharmaceuticals. Yahoo China also announced that it was strictly controlling the contents of its ads.