Over past months Google has struggled to establish on China’s market. This struggle over censorship and licence continues. Not long time ago Google lost its battle against Chinese search engine Baidu that I wrote about in February (Full Story Here).

Since couple of months www.google.cn was redirecting all search queries or rather users to Google.com.hk (Google Hong Kong). This was a temporary solution because Beijing threatened to revoke the company’s license to provide online content in China.

Below news served in China by Reuters. Are they promoting Baidu in this video or I’m wrong?

July 1 (Reuters) – China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday it had no comment on Google’s decision to end automatic rerouting of users to its uncensored Hong Kong search portal, but that all Internet operators had to abide by local laws.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang referred questions about Google to “relevant agencies”, adding only that “Internet operators in China should abide by Chinese laws and regulations.”

Google (GOOG.O) said on Monday it would end automatic redirection of users to its Hong Kong search site as Beijing had expressed displeasure at the practice and would be unwilling to renew its Internet Content Provider licence if it continued. [ID:nN29146978] – Source Reuters

Updated on 01/07/2010 at 16:45

That’s a prospect dreaded by many of our Chinese users, who have been vocal about their desire to keep Google.cn alive. 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. – Source Official Google Blog

Updated on 02/07/2010 at 00:55

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