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

Re:Not much of a change

[Monkeedude1212]

China is like the Apple App store. Its always some stupid tiny detail that keeps you from getting in the store. And even if you get approved 1 week you could be taken out the next.

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: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.