09 July 2010 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

China renews Google's license

Google has confirmed that the Chinese government has renewed its ICP license in the country, after the search giant made concessions to comply with Chinese law.

"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 post on the Official Google Blog.

The California search company withdrew its operations from Beijing in March to set up base in Hong Kong, where rules over censorship are less strict. However, BBC News reported that many were concerned that the company's recent action of simply redirecting Chinese users to a landing page with a link to the Hong Kong site would not be enough to satisfy the nation's authorities

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said he was optimistic about the company's prospects, telling attendees of a recent conference in Sun Valley, Idaho: "We would expect we would get the necessary licence.

"We now expect to get a renewal."

Although he did concede: "Our operations in China are completely at the discretion of the Chinese government."

Today's blog post explains: "Ever since we launched Google.cn, our search engine for mainland Chinese users, we have done our best to increase access to information while abiding by Chinese law.

"This has not always been an easy balance to strike, especially since our January announcement that we were no longer willing to censor results on Google.cn.

"Over the next few days we'll end the redirect entirely, taking all our Chinese users to our new landing page - and today we re-submitted our ICP license renewal application based on this approach.

"As a company we aspire to make information available to users everywhere, including China. It's why we have worked so hard to keep Google.cn alive, as well as to continue our research and development work in China. This new approach is consistent with our commitment not to self censor and, we believe, with local law. We are therefore hopeful that our license will be renewed on this basis so we can continue to offer our Chinese users services via Google.cn."

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