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Beijing, Mar 31 (ANI): The already soured relationship between Google Inc and China might face a crisis situation as it was reported that the world’s biggest search engine has not yet succeeded in meeting Thurday’s deadline to apply for a licence for its online mapping services, industry analysts have said.

The China Daily quoted the analysts as saying that Google might not face the threat of being immediately shut down in China despite missing the deadline, but it is definitely a “pessimistic” sign for Google’s already soured relationship with the Chinese government.

Meanwhile, the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM) has confirmed that as of March 28, Google had not applied for an online mapping license.

The bureau said that it would declare the names of companies who failed to get a license, but continue to run mapping services in the country.

According to a regulation announced last May, the bureau however, has the right to shut down services after July 1.

The paper quoted a source close to Google’s China operation as saying that it was “very unlikely” that the US search engine would apply for the online mapping license before the deadline.

A spokesperson for Google China has declined to talk about the issue, only saying that: “We are examining the regulations to understand their impact on our map products in China”.

Since Google moved its web search service to Hong Kong after refusing to censor search results as demanded by the Chinese government, Google’s market share dropped to 19.6 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, from 35.6 percent for the same period a year earlier.

Google has recently accused the Chinese government of disrupting its Gmail service and blaming Google’s technical failures for the blockage. (ANI)