There’s been a lot of talk surrounding Google, and what it is that Google does in China. You may or may not recall that in January of this year, the search company announced plans to effectively discontinue filtering search results on Google.cn — a move that didn’t impress the Chinese government one bit.
The tech industry was seemingly confident that Google — a direct result of its “defiance” — would not be getting its Internet Content Provider license renewed, thereby shutting down its operations completely within the world’s most populated nation.
But as it would turn out, Beijing has decided to renew Google’s ICP license, allowing the company to go at least another year unscathed. It’s likely due to the fact that Google has discontinue forwarding its Google.cn page to Google’s Hong Kong page, which does not filter search results.
That doesn’t mean that Google’s acquiesced to the Chinese government’s demands completely. The company still provides a highly-visible link on its Google.cn homepage that will take users to Google’s Hong Kong search page should they be interested in searching without government-mandated filters.
“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,” said a Google spokeswoman on the matter.
It’s certainly not the end result Google pictured in their January statement, but it’s certainly better than having their operations shut down completely.
via Reuters