Google announced the renewal in a brief update on The Official Google Blog. The statement said the company was "very pleased" that the Chinese government had renewed its Internet content provider license "and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China."
Not 'An Easy Balance to Strike'
David Drummond, Google's senior vice president and chief legal officer, noted in a previous blog entry that it "has not always been an easy balance to strike" between increasing access to information and abiding by Chinese law, especially given the company's announcement in January that it was "no longer willing to censor results on Google.cn." At the time of the January announcement, Google also said it had detected hacking attacks from the Chinese mainland.
Google is not the number-one search engine in China, a position held by the Chinese-based Baidu. But China represents a potentially huge market for Google's growing Android-based mobile devices, as well as other products and services. The search giant opened its China site in 2006.
The redirection of all traffic using Google.cn to Google.com.hk, the company said, provided unfiltered search in simplified Chinese and was "working well." But, Drummond noted, Chinese government officials were not happy with the redirect and threatened not to renew the Internet content provider license, rendering the country Google-dark. A Google spokesperson said the license actually runs through 2012, but has to be renewed each year.
'No Law-Breaking Contents'
When it ended the automatic redirection, Google said it had started taking a small percentage of users to a landing page at Google.cn, which then provided a link to Google.com.hk. Searches could be conducted on the Hong Kong site, or users could employ music and text-translation services on Google.cn without filtering.
"This approach," Drummond wrote, allowed Google to "stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on Google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page."
Friday's announcement didn't indicate if Google has to allow any filtering or restrict its services in any way. According to news reports, Google's local partner, Guxiang Information Technology, has said it will "abide by the Chinese law" and "provide no law-breaking contents."
Last week, Google reported that users on the Chinese mainland were being blocked from using its "suggest" feature, which completes a query with possibilities as a user begins to type.
