According to the Google Blog, China is playing hardball. When Google said they would no longer censor results, China threatened to shut Google out of China completely. So Goiog did a workaround by redirecting people from Google.cn to Google .hk, sending visitors to the Hong Kong engine for results. Now China says they won’t accept that.
We currently automatically redirect everyone using Google.cn to Google.com.hk, our Hong Kong search engine. This redirect, which offers unfiltered search in simplified Chinese, has been working well for our users and for Google. 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 (it’s up for renewal on June 30). Without an ICP license, we can’t operate a commercial website like Google.cn—so Google would effectively go dark in China.
Now Google has come up with a new plan to redirect from a Google.cn landing page which is a huge clickable graphic that will send visitors right back to Google.hk – but hopefully without ruffling the Chinese government’s feathers:
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 web search or continue to use Google.cn services like music and text translate, which we can provide locally without filtering. This approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on Google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page.
Over the next few days we’ll end the redirect entirely, taking all our Chinese users to our new landing page—and today we re-submitted our ICP license renewal application based on this approach.
Many think this fix won’t last long – the NY Times quoted well known search marketer Dany Sullivan:
“If the Chinese government isn’t happy with them running uncensored search results out of the Hong Kong site — I don’t see why they’ll be any happier just because it becomes one click away,” Danny Sullivan, who runs the search-analysis Web site Search Engine Land, told Bloomberg News.
The main supporters of Google in China are researchers and students, who say valuable and much needed information will become unavailable to them if China disallows Google access.
In the meantime, Baidu is looking for 30 new employees at a job fair in the US on July 10th. Baidu is Google’s main competitor in China.