Google Gets New License in China

Will Google Take a Stand in China?

 

Google is legal again in China. In a one-sentence update Friday to a June 28th blog post, SVP David Drummond said:

We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China.

After it became clear that Chinese officials were not happy with its practice of automatically redirecting search users from mainland China to google.hk, Google dusted off Google.cn as a landing page. Google.cn provides users with services like music and text translation, as well as a link to Google.hk, where they still have access to unfiltered search results.

Once the changes were made and Google stopped automatically redirecting traffic to Google.hk, the company revised its application for a renewed Internet content provider license, but the government kept the company waiting for days before its decision became clear. In fact, immediately after Google's previous license expired, Google search capability in China was partially blocked.

As of Friday, Google's mainland China service availability report indicates search capabilities are mostly or fully accessible.