Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Google Switches Tactics On China

Search engine giant Google said last night that it is switching up its tactics in China, after hearing from Chinese government officials that they will not renew Google's Internet Content Provider license, if the firm continues to redirect requests for Google.cn to its Hong Kong equivalent. Google said its ICP license is up for renewal on June 30th, and if it does not stop redirecting users to its Hong Kong search engine, it would "effectively go dark" in China. Instead, Google said that instead of automatically redirecting all users on its Chinese site, it is taking a "small percentage" to Google.com.hk where users can continue to access results without filtering. Google said it hopes the new approach will allow its license to be renewed. Google has been battling China over censorship of search results since January, when it said it would stop censoring searches on its web site.