China Renews Google's Content Provider License

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."

Comments

Not much of a change

[Cimexus]

It's funny how an automatic redirect isn't acceptable, whereas the current landing page approach really just requires one extra click. And the redirect button fills most of the screen (and looks like a search window, so you think you're clicking in the box to put your cursor there and type something, but it's actually a link).

http://google.cn/ if you want to check it out for yourself.

So subtle a difference, really, from a practical point of view. Yet this is acceptable where the other approach wasn't.

Re:Not much of a change

[sv_libertarian]

The pseudo-communists in China need to save face somehow; it's all about appearances. Who knows, if they were pissed at google, they probably would have ordered the word purged from their language or something stupid like that.

Re:Not much of a change

[DigiShaman]

I can't say for sure, but my gut feeling is that China is genuinely trying to change to allow for more freedom. Last 20 years have proven that so far.

What most people don't realize is that with self re-enforcing totalitarian regimes, there's a lot of political and bureaucratic momentum that can take generations to blunt. No single person wants to put their head on the chopping block. But as a whole, I think most people in China want a more westernized system. You only get full democracies over-night with a revolution. But you won't get that with China. With this country, change will happen very slowly as it is now.

What I'm saying in short is this. If China was serious about maintaining an iron fist, Google would have been kicked out long ago! In fact, China is trying to tell the world "read between the lines". We want freedom, but we're sure as hell not going to make it obvious.

Re:Not much of a change

[hackerjoe]

Because it's apt. As much as people like to paint the Chinese government as a cartoon evil, for the most part they're more of a fumbling, incomprehensible bureaucracy, just like every other government. I've watched people at my company deal with the same kind of stuff, trying to meet government requirements for online software, and the distinct impression I got was of jumping through arbitrary hoops.

The Chinese government is still doing some scary things, but it's not like 30 years ago, that's for sure.

Re:Not much of a change

[Monkeedude1212]

If you are a Chinese National and are loyal to the current Chinese government, your selection of search engine is perhaps influenced by these two distinct images.

That's an interesting point, might I also add that you might be influenced to choose Baidu over Google in fear of being branded as someone who wishes to access the unfiltered internet.

Re:Not much of a change

[iserlohn]

The is nothing democratic about capitalism at all. Fascists do not need to pretend they are capitalists; they are capitalists. Fascism is the logical extension of corporatism, developed as the capitalist friendly answer to the socialistic theories of class conflict. In essence, Fascism is "those who owns the means of production, also control the state". This is to establish harmony in the different sectors of society in order to further the agendas of those that own the means of production.

The idea of democracy that the state is answerable to the populace, and that really has nothing to do with private enterprise at all. It is possible to have a social democracy for example but not a fascist democracy. Socialism by definition does not require authoritarianism, but fascism and communism does.

Re:And this is important...

[Andy Dodd]

Because Google has pretty much said "fuck you" (in far more polite terms) to a major world superpower when most world governments are afraid to do so.

Let's face it - The one thing the Chinese really didn't want was unfiltered search results, and Google is still providing that, just in a somewhat indirect manner.