Doubt about Google’s future in China has been looming over the standoff between the search engine giant and the government – which in January warned it might pull out of China because of the country’s censorship policies and allegations of cyber-hacking.
The search engine leader whose license was up for renewal at the end of last month, had refused to censor search results, but, recently reached a compromise and decided to refrain from automatically redirecting Chinese traffic to its uncensored Hong Kong site that upset Chinese officials. The Google search engine in China was blocked in March to avoid censorship demanded by Chinese authorities.
China has renewed Google’s Internet Content Provider license, according to a brief update provided by David Drummond, the company’s senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer on The Official Google Blog. The statement stated that the company was “very pleased” that the Chinese government had renewed its Internet content provider license “and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China.”
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology sanctioned the renewal application by the operator of Google’s China website, Beijing Guxiang Information Technology Co., after the company submitted a letter pledging to “adhere with Chinese law,” and “ensure the company provides no law-breaking content,” according to a report by China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency on Sunday. The report said Guxiang also “accepted that all content it provides is subject to supervision of government regulators.”
The renewal was granted just a week after Google discontinued automatically redirecting users of its Chinese website to Hong Kong — with this step behind it now, Google will be able to continue to provide Web search and local products to users in China. Users must now click on a separate tab to be redirected — in a move viewed by industry insiders as a necessary compromise to the authorities.
The move is viewed as the latest attempt in melting down the frosty relationship between the US and China, and came just a day after the US Treasury chose not to label China a currency manipulator in spite of its continued pegging of the yuan to the dollar.
“Our operations in China are completely at the discretion of the Chinese government. I do not want anyone to be confused about that,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said at a news conference Thursday after announcing he expected the license to be renewed.
Drummond, in an earlier blog entry stated that it “has not always been an easy balance to strike” between increasing access to information and abiding by Chinese law, especially given the company’s announcement in January that it was “no longer willing to censor results on Google.cn.” At the time of the January announcement, Google also said it had detected hacking attacks from the Chinese mainland.
It is still pretty obscure whether Google’s alternative solution would have the desired affect. China has displayed little disposition to get cozy with even the biggest of foreign establishments, and Google has been no exception, Rob Enderle, principal of the Enderle Group, said in a statement.
“We look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China,” said Drummond, in a company blog post.
For the moment, the decision secures the search engine giant’s foothold in the country with the most Internet users. But it would not end the uncertainty around Google’s future in China because Beijing can revoke the license at any time or block access to Google’s services.
“We consider that it is important to be in China,” Schmidt told CNBC. “We want to do it in a way that does not violate our fundamental principles.”
“What is most thought-provoking is that the Chinese government would make this decision after a private company challenged its censorship policy before the eyes of the Chinese people,” said Xiao Qiang, a journalism professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
Xiao, who previously ran a human rights group, said the stand-off is far from over… “This is just the beginning” of what will be a protracted struggle between Google and China, he predicted.
Google announced the renewal Friday, and officials confirmed it over the weekend.