The Chinese government and its censors have been at odds with Google ever since the company announced this past January that it would stop filtering its search results. Google made this decision after it called out China for hacking into the Gmail accounts of human rights activist and other cyberattacks, now called Operation Aurora, which targeted more than 20 other US companies.
In March Google decided it would automatically redirect its search engine operating in China (google.cn) to a different server in Hong Kong, one that would provide unfettered search results. At that time, David Drummond, Google’s VP and chief legal officer, acknowledged that the Chinese government could retaliate by blocking all mainland China access to Google at any time, but that he hoped cooler heads would prevail to prevent such action.
Now with Google seeking renewal of its ICP license in China, which expired on June 30, the company has said it will stop the automatic redirect to Hong Kong entirely, apparently with the hope that it can ease the rather tension-filled situation between it and the Chinese government.
“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”, Drummond said in a recent posting on Google’s official company blog. “Without an ICP license, we can’t operate a commercial website like Google.cn – so Google would effectively go dark in China.”
Google has stopped the automatic redirect to Google.com.hk completely, bringing visitors to the Google.cn site to a new landing page that instead links to the Hong Kong-based site, which is unfiltered. Drummond noted that Google has resubmitted its ICP license renewal application based on this new tactic.
Thus far Google is still awaiting word from the Chinese government as to whether this change in policy will be enough to secure the company a renewal of its operator’s license.