Google legal in China again, despite HK link (and Super Mario)

By Richi Jennings. July 9, 2010.

Google's annual license renewal has been approved by the Chinese authorities. There was some doubt that the company would succeed: what with its decision to not self-censor, and its routing of searches through Hong Kong. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers are happy that cooler heads won the day.

Your humble blogwatcher selected these bloggy morsels for your enjoyment. Not to mention super Super Mario...
(GOOG)
 
 
Matt Warman weaves a story:

There had been concerns that ... Chinese authorities would prevent Google from operating. ... The company began rerouting all queries to the uncensored Hong Kong site google.com.hk. Subsequently, it introduced an intermediary [link] which continued to give users the option to seek uncensored results.
...
China has the largest number of people online in the world, despite low levels of web penetration. Google, however, is a distant second to rival search engine Baidu.

Robert Andrews clarifies the Hong Kong link:

With renewal looming, Google compromised by restoring the Google.cn search box ... adding a link that users can themselves follow out to Google.com.hk. ... In keeping with its refusal to censor ... the search results will be limited to music, products and translation, not web pages.
...
[The] Chinese can choose whether to perform uncensored web search outside of China. ... It absolves Google of any burden associated with accessing censored information. ... It would seem to transfer culpability for accessing that information to citizens themselves.

Google's David Drummond is suspiciously brief and to the point:

We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China.

And Robin Wauters flows:

CEO Eric Schmidt just yesterday said he was confident the Chinese government would renew its license to operate a website. He was right. ... thus averting a potential shutdown of its search page in the fast-growing Internet market, the world’s biggest with over 400 million estimated users.
...
Things seem to have cooled down, at least for now. ... End of story, or just the beginning of a new chapter? Time will tell..

But Dean Wilson is slightly snarky:

It is probably likely that Schmidt was already aware of the licence approval ... when he made his comments. He is undoubtedly happy that his company gets to continue its operations ... offering it millions in revenue on an annual basis ... set to grow as it expands its business there.

So Frank Reed sums it up:

It looks like the “Will they renew or won’t they renew?” arc of “As Google-China Turns” is over and it has a happy ending for Google. ...  This offering by Google seemed pretty weak. Well, one man’s weak is another company’s license I suppose.
...
Google is obviously happy with this development considering the size of the opportunity. ... I think Google likes a good challenge since bing and others seem to not provide it for them anywhere else. ... All is good with the world again.

And Finally...
Super Mario Bros. speedrun visualized as one long projection
[hat tip: Andy Baio]
 
 
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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itbw@richij.com.

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