[btmorex]

Google has ~24 billion in revenue. Twitter is harder to pinpoint but from the sources I've seen it's far less than 50 million. Facebook is somewhere around 400-550 million.

I guess my point is that they aren't even in the same stratosphere. Twitter and Facebook may be international recognized (and clearly I should have differentiated here), but they aren't in any way equivalent to a behemoth like Google.

[nicolas_t]

Well they aren't the equivalent in term of revenues but Twitter, Facebook and Youtube (also banned in China after having been allowed at the beginning) are all as well known as Google to the average user...

Apart from that, Google's revenue doesn't give them any leverage on the Chinese government, mostly because they wouldn't ever back down on censoring as it would mean losing face...