5 ms·
China Renews Google’s License
- c1sc0 16y agoLots of good news coming out of China lately: appreciation of the yuan, increase of worker wages & now a slow opening up in the Google case.
- WalterGR 16y agoChina is continuing to permit Google to show a link to Google Hong Kong, after likely withholding Google's ICP license renewal if they continued to automatically redirect to Goog HK. I don't see much opening up here.
- invisible 16y agoClicking anywhere on the page effectively goes to google.com.hk so google.cn is pretty much just a dummy page. I guess it is all semantics, but it's a pretty dumb game.
- WalterGR 16y agoClicking anywhere on the page effectively goes to google.com.hk so google.cn is pretty much just a dummy page. You're right. I thought that: "Under the current setup in mainland China, users can conduct a Google search and see the results, but often they cannot open the links." ...meant that users could conduct the search via google.cn without being redirected to google.com.hk.
- vorg 16y agoNow, Google can put a strip along the top of that dummy page with an option whether or not to automatically redirect for repeat visitors from the same computer or IP address. Then only first-time visitors need click on the page! Would that continue to satisfy China's demand I wonder?
- moxiemk1 16y agoFor China, I feel like this is a slippery slope that will (despite the governments best efforts for many years) put the country on level ground with the rest of the world. Thus, China's enormous influence over the rest of the world will decrease, their mad profitability will decrease, and the level of respect they receive will increase.
- zapb 16y agoThe yuan will likely appreciate significantly over the next two decades (money could be made on that), unfortunately always at the rate dictated by the government.
- ww520 16y agoThey want to avoid the repeat of the sudden Yen appreciation and Japan's Lost Decade.
- vmind 16y agoNo registration: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10566318.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10566318.stm I haven't checked whether the content is the same, however.
- strebler 16y agoIt's quite disappointing to see them go from: "we're pulling out" to: "please renew our domain license Mr. Nice Government." I suppose their original threat was a touch naive.
- spiffage 16y agoTheir play wasn't "we're pulling out." It was "we're not censoring anymore." As far as I know, they're still not censoring anymore. Seems to me like a win for all involved.
- strebler 16y agoThat's true, but it seemed like pulling out was the logical conclusion after "breaking local laws". The thing I don't understand is why going from "autoredirect" to "click to redirect" was the crux for renewal. It feels strange that that was the key deciding factor for the Government.
- varjag 16y agoIt was not. It was a face-saving act for the CPC courtesy of Google, and both parties knew it. Now Google officially complies to Chinese government demands, and they can chalk it as victory (no matter if only very formal one).
- zapb 16y agoExactly, Google complies with the government demands. But next year there will be more government demands.
- varjag 16y agoI'm not sure about that. Google already demonstrated they don't care about their presence in China that much to put up with the crap, so the Party will likely avoid stand-offs in the future.
- 16y ago
- felog 16y agoGoogles move in China will leave lots of revenue on the table for Baidu. Moving search to HK was a reasonable thing to do but they might have also left a varient search engine back at .cn that would only see products and services, in safe categories. That might have allowed them to dodge the censorship issues and keep advertisers happy until China begins to relax its censorship rules in the coming years.