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China Renews Google's Content Provider License

Posted by kdawson on from the careful-dance-with-the-devil dept.

snydeq writes "The Chinese government has renewed Google's Internet Content Provider license (announcement), enabling the company to continue to provide Web search and other local products to users in China. If Google had been unable to renew its license, it could have meant the end of the company's operations in China, leaving search engine rival Baidu to dominate the market. Last week Google began making efforts to win over Chinese officials. Rather than automatically redirecting Google.cn visitors to Google's Hong Kong search engine (a strategy the Chinese government found unacceptable), the company now sends visitors to a 'landing page' where they can choose to click on a link leading to the Hong Kong site, or stay to use unfiltered services such as music or text translation."

3 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Re:pulling out? by zarzu · · Score: 2, Informative

    well they pulled out in the sense that they are no longer censoring things. i don't think they ever announced that the will fully pull out, their hope always (well, after they stopped complying with censorship at least) was to continue the full service without censoring. weirdly enough they now seem to have a deal that accomplishes exactly what they want. i say weirdly because you can practically click any where on the google.cn page and you will be sent to the hong kong one, where you can actually search. this makes chinas censorship look like a joke, providing that the com.hk address isn't blocked by them (but i guess it isn't).

  2. Too big to be killed by hackingbear · · Score: 2, Informative

    China could have just cut off google.com.hk like it's doing for thousands of small HK sites, but they don't. Being a totalitarian does not mean it can ignore public opinion. Google is a PR hot potato for the Chinese officials, because it is too big and famous. If a smaller site tried that, it would be crushed without anybody noticing.

    Now that the PR officials can maintain sites under their supervision remains clean without dealing with public outcry while the search results are continued to be filtered, by the Great Firewall. Google can claim their results "unfiltered" and appease to a whole crowd, while giving up only a little usability (and effective market share.)

    For us average netizen, the lesson is not that China is softening. The lesson is, once again, if you are big enough you can have a lot of power, including the power to bargain with another big guy.

  3. Re:Not much of a change by dUN82 · · Score: 2, Informative

    This the the Chinese way of doing things, it's not about what you do, but the gesture of doing things.