Google still in China

A Google official has announced this morning that the search giant is back in action in China. Google, the second most popular search engine in China, behind Baidu, announced in January of this year that it would no longer censor its search results on the Chinese version of its website, against the wishes of the Chinese government. As a result, Google's stock price plummeted while Baidu's stock price saw all time highs, surpassing Google on the stock market.

A couple months later, Google began redirecting users accessing the google.cn version of Google to the uncensored Hong Kong version. Unfortunately, Chinese officials didn't find that acceptable and threatened to not renew Google's Internet Content Provider (ICP) license, which grants the search giant permission to operate a commercial website in China. Google was therefore slated to go dark in China when their existing ICP license (which must be renewed annually) expired.

Google recently started providing a link to the Hong Kong site on the Google.cn landing page instead of an automatic redirect. As of this morning, Google has announced that the Chinese government has found this latest revision acceptable and has just renewed Google's ICP license. That means Google is in the clear with China ... for now. Either way, Google's pre-market stock price has soared 14 points so far. The official word has been posted on the official Google Blog by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer of Google.

[Lecee Lery]

sometime i wonder.... why can't google obey China's request...

[Devoted Hosting]

Glad to hear it's been sorted :)

Whilst I'm sure neither would like to admit it, I doubt that Google pulling out from China would benefit either company/country.

[canadafred]

ya ... ok ... anyone think they're gonna' start acting like a search engine again rather than this shit stirring self-proclaimed global diplomat ... go Google

[AirForceOne]

In my own opinion, Google has never left China since it only redirect the SERP pages to Google.hk. Also, I think Google might not afford to lose the big growing market on China mainland.

all the best,

[redesignunit]

Google never left china because Google goat some business from china

[elum.chaitu]

Hello The Great Firewall of China, which gives the Chinese government the ability to restrict certain Web sites from appearing on computers in China.That was the whole reason Google agreed to censor its search engine when it entered China, arguing that it wanted to provide a better searching experience for the vast majority of queries that aren't politically sensitive.

[mathis]

its just take few weeks or less when google beats baidu and becoming the largest search engine in china as well :)
google is the best

[fanatic123]

I don't think google will ever leave China, they might have shifted priorities.

[stevenpeter]

Google is best , even the chiness are doing the their best to defeat the Google. They are making attacks to destroy Google influnce .