Google is looking for creative ways to remain true to its uncensored search stance in China as it seeks to renew its operating license in the communist nation. For the past three months, Google has been redirecting traffic to its uncensored Hong Kong search engine, but is moving to reverse that motion with a twist.
Apparently, Google isn’t as willing to leave China as some thought.
David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer at Google, set the stage for a possible position swing by pointing to Google’s quest to increase information while abiding by Chinese law from the first day it launched Google.cn.
“This redirect, which offers unfiltered search in simplified Chinese, has been working well for our users and for Google,” he said. “However, it’s clear from conversations 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.”
At China’s Mercy
Google’s ICP license is up for renewal on June 30. Of course, without an ICP license Google can’t operate a commercial web site like Google.cn. Google is at the Chinese government’s mercy. If China doesn’t renew Google’s license, Google will effectively go dark in China. So Drummond put the decision to change direction on the backs of Chinese Internet users.
Specifically, Drummond said many of Google’s Chinese users dread the prospect of Google going dark and have been vocal about their desire to keep Google.cn alive.
“We have therefore been looking at possible alternatives, and instead of automatically redirecting all our users, we have started taking a small percentage of them to a landing page on Google.cn that links to Google.com.hk — where users can conduct a web search or continue to use Google.cn services like music…