Google could pull out of China as early as April 10, a Chinese newspaper reported today quoting an authorised agent for the search engine.

The decision and departure date could be announced on Monday – the day after the company’s staff are due to receive their annual year-end bonus, the Chinese Business News reported.

The agent said: “I have received information that Google will leave China on April 10, but this information has not at present been confirmed by Google.”

Google China spokeswoman Marsha Wang declined to comment on the report.

Speculation has been rife as to whether and when Google would pull out and which of its services would be affected after it announced in January that it could no longer submit to contractual obligations on censorship of its search engine after cyberattacks from China aimed at its source code and the Gmail accounts of several human rights activists.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said last week he hoped to have an outcome soon from talks with Chinese officials on offering an uncensored google.cn search engine in the country.

However, the chances that Chinese authorities will agree to such a request are believed to be zero.

In the meantime, Google has continued to filter google.cn results to abide by Chinese regulations but it said it if China did not permit it to cease the screening it would be forced to withdraw from the market.

However, its google.com search engine, which is hosted on an offshore server, is unlikely to be affected unless Chinese cyber censors decide to block the service. Youtube, Facebook and Twitter are all blocked in China and the Great Firewall also prevents access to many other sites deemed to contain sensitive content.

China’s enormous online population of more than 340 million is eager to know if such services as Gmail, Google Earth, its Chinese music search business and the popular Chinese version of its knowledge market site, Google Answers, will remain accessible after the closing of google.cn. That Chinese language search engine will remain operational outside the mainland market.

Google has built up an estimated 36 per cent market share since it opened the search engine in China in 2006 while its huge competitor, the domestic Baidu, dominates the market.