Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates… said that China's "efforts to censor the Internet have been very limited…" In separate comments, he criticized … Google's statement… that it would stop obeying Beijing's censorship rules …and might close its offices in the country... Gates said the Internet has helped free expression, and that in China it is "easy to go around" the government's system of controls… He said "… you've got to decide: Do you want to obey the laws of the countries you're in, or not?"… Mr. Gates [also] belittled Google's China statement. "They've done nothing and gotten a lot of credit for it," he said. "What point are they making?"… China's Internet controls go far beyond those of countries like Germany, censoring a wide range of politically sensitive content… Lian Yue, a prominent Chinese blogger, wrote on Twitter that he thought Mr. Gates' critique of Google was "silly and unfair," and that his defense of Beijing's position "is unwise even from a pure business perspective, as it is damaging to Microsoft's commercial reputation."… Microsoft's Internet business has struggled to gain a foothold in China... Microsoft in June introduced a Chinese version of its Bing search engine, which like other search engines in China strips politically sensitive links from its search results. In 2006, Microsoft was criticized by U.S. lawmakers and free speech advocates after it deleted a popular Chinese blog that was critical of the government at the request of Chinese authorities.