Beijing, China — In a bid to maintain its presence in mainland China, Internet search engine behemoth Google Inc., changed tack in China to address government objection about its attempts to evade censorship by redirecting users to an uncensored site in Hong Kong, as it vied to get its business license renewed in the world’s largest online market.
Earlier this year, the web search giant Google has threatened to shut down Google.cn, the censored search engine that it set up to comply with Chinese laws. But later on, Google had opted to use the tactic to bypass Chinese censorship regulations and generate an unfiltered page of search results. Hence, traffic to the site was redirected to Google’s uncensored Hong Kong search engine, Google.com.hk.
Google’s Chinese landing page features a prominent link to the Hong Kong site.
At the time, Google said the move to redirect traffic from the Chinese site to Hong Kong was a “sensible solution,” nevertheless, the search engine annoyed Chinese officials, and the country’s firewalls did manage to filter the results for users based in the country, but the communist government was nevertheless unhappy who eventually forced Google to stop.
Google said China had described the move as “unacceptable” and had threatened to revoke its license. As a concession, Google said it would stop automatically redirecting users, instead requiring them to click on a link that takes them to the Hong Kong site.
“It is evident from the discussions we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable — and that if we continue redirecting users our Internet Content Provider license will not be renewed,” wrote David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and Google’s chief legal officer, in a blog post, adding that its license is up for renewal on Thursday.
Without an ICP license, we can not operate a commercial website like Google.cn — so Google would effectively go dark in China. “Over the next few days we will stop the redirect entirely, taking all our Chinese users to our new landing page,” he said, explaining that the new page on Google.cn links to the Hong Kong site.
In a bid to preserve its ICP license, the company is confident that this actiov will be enough to placate angry officials in Beijing, and secure the renewal of its ICP license. The license, which expires Wednesday, extends through 2012 but has to be renewed each year. Google expects a decision within weeks, a person familiar with the situation said.
“This new approach is consistent with our commitment not to self-censor and, we believe, with local law,” Drummond, wrote in a blog post.
Although it remains doubtful whether the Chinese government will accept what one analyst called a “peace offering.” A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said at a regular press briefing Tuesday that he had not seen Google’s statement and had no specific comment.
“The Chinese government encourages foreign enterprises to operate in China according to the law, and we also administer the Internet according to the law,” said Wang Lijian, a spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Analysts expressed that Google has ventured to strike an uneasy balance with China, tempering its ambitions to grow in the world’s largest Internet market with its reluctance to bow to the government’s mandate to censor search results. The result has been a shrinking share of the search market in China, and Google’s latest move seemed to be a last-ditch attempt to prevent authorities from withdrawing their ICP license — but one which likely would not succeed.
“It is a Googly solution–an elegant solution… But for the Chinese authorities, it is more of a loophole,” said Beijing-based Internet consultant Bill Bishop, who blogs about China’s Internet on Digicha.com.
“It just means it is an extra step for Chinese Internet users to access Google and will probably lead to a huge drop-off in traffic,” he said in a statement.
“It is weird how Google takes this public 30 hours before they get their official license renewed because they know trying to shame the Chinese government publicly is not really a successful strategy.”