SHANGHAI/BEIJING –

Google Inc. appears increasingly likely to shutter its Chinese-language search engine, despite continuing talks with the Chinese government about censorship of its Chinese language search portal.

The world's biggest search engine has been in a two-month standoff with Beijing over restrictions on the Internet and Google's claims that it and other companies were hit by hacking from within China.

The company's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said last week he hoped to announce soon an outcome from talks with Chinese officials on offering an uncensored search engine in that country of 384 million Internet users.

Many experts have doubted China's ruling Communist Party would compromise on censorship, and on the weekend the Financial Times reported the talks had reached an impasse and Google was "99.9 per cent" certain to shut its Chinese search engine, Google.cn.

"Our forecast has always remained firm that once Google announced it would not accept censorship, then it was nearly impossible to imagine a scenario either where Google didn't act on that or the government accepted their position," Mark Natkin, managing director of Marbridge Consulting said.

Marbridge Consulting is a Beijing-based company that advises on China's IT and telecommunications sectors.

A Google spokesperson said on Monday talks with Chinese authorities had not ended, but added that the company was adamant about not accepting self-censorship.

"We've been very clear that we are no longer going to self-censor our search results," the spokesperson said.

Foreign news reports and China's own state-run media, however, have reflected growing signs that Google could soon acknowledge that its effort to free up its Chinese website faces a deadlock and the company will prepare to shut it down.