For the past six months, Google has been embroiled in a standoff with the Chinese government after it threatened to cease blocking online content deemed objectionable by authorities.
In March, Google made good on that threat by redirecting traffic from the mainland to Hong Kong, where it operates outside of the content-filtering requirements. But continuing to do so would have ensured that officials would not renew the company’s operating license, Google said. So instead of automatically redirecting traffic from Google.cn, the company now presents Chinese users with a landing page leading them to the Hong Kong site, which seems to have placated government officials, who have granted Google’s application for its ICP license. Datamation takes a look.
Google has confirmed that it has secured permission from China to continue operating its search engine, bringing some closure to a six-month showdown over Internet censorship.
Friday morning, the search giant updated its corporate blog to announce that the Chinese government had renewed Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Internet Content Provider license, a necessary condition of doing business on the Web in that country.