Money Matters, Simplified.
Google gets to stay in China
by Samia Sehgal - July 10, 2010 - comments
Google announced on Friday that China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has renewed its license.
Google Inc. has received renewal of its license to operate in China. After a long censorship battle with the search engine giant, the Chinese government granted permission to internet search giant to continue operating its Chinese site, Google.cn, in the country.
Google had been passing on Chinese users to its unfiltered search site in Hong Kong, sparking concerns that it would soon have to wrap up operations in the People’s Republic.
Google makes small compromise to save business
However, the company acted in time and announced last week that it is no more redirecting the users to its sister site.
“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”
The decision was seen as an attempt to mollify the concerns of Chinese government, as they had recently warned the Mountain View company that its expiring content-provider license will not be expanded unless it stops redirecting mainland Google users to an unfiltered site.
Hong Kong site still accessible, but only by choice
Back in march, Google had started this practice of automatically passing users to a site in Hong Kong, which is a less regulated administrative region that has limited autonomy and does not practice censorship.
So instead of transferring the users automatically to another site, Google then adopted an alternative approach, providing access to content that is not required to be filtered and adding a link to its sister site Google.com.hk on the home page.
The strategy worked, and Google announced on Friday that China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which was looking over the matter, has renewed its license.
“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 David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer.
Google looks to tap into growing Chinese markets
Though China has the largest internet audience in the world, it contributed only a little more than 1 percent of Google’s total revenue last year. About 60 percent of Chinese users opt for the local site Baidu.
However, keeping roots in China is important to Google, as it is also a potential market for its other services. The Asian country is one of the fastest growing mobile phone markets, which would have been closed for Google, had it failed to win the license this time.