(Photo : Google Inc )

Google Inc recently announced the resignation of Liu Yun, the company's vice president and Greater China president. Leaving to pursue other opportunities, he will be replaced by Scott Beaumont, who works with Google's European partners, the company said.

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Despite being one of the biggest search engine markets in the world, Google China has experienced a series of difficulties only months after Liu Yun took over as the head of operations. Mark Natkin, managing director of Chinese technology research firm, Marbridge Consulting, said that Google's propriety in the industry went down significantly upon moving their servers from the mainland to Hong Kong.

Google's share of the search engine market has dropped considerably. Originally holding 8 percent of market items in terms of page views in 2011, ranking second with 81 percent while Baidu placed first, CNZZ, a Chinese data firm said. After losing as much as 6 points from its market share in two years, Google now only ranks fifth.

Google China is also having difficulty with its Android operating system. Though the smartphones are successfully localized throughout the country, the company is having trouble monetizing it. Android smartphones made up 69 percent of the sales in a three-month period that ended in April. The monetization of the smartphones was usually done through software in China, Natkin said.

A report made in March by China Academy of Telecommunications and Research, under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology stated that the prevalence Android smartphones and dependency on them showed that Google had too much control over China's smartphone sector. It also said that the government would be supporting a viable domestic competitor.

Elinor Leung, Hong Kong-based head of Asia telecom and internet research at CLSA, said that Google's biggest challenge is still penetrating China. She added also that Liu's resignation and replacement by Beaumont would have little impact.