China is satisfied that Google is complying with Chinese laws after the search engine tweaked the way it directs users to an unfiltered search page.
Guxiang, a company that operates Google’s websites in China, had committed to “abide by Chinese law,” and ensure the company did not provide illegal content, said Zhang Feng, head of the ministry’s communication development division.
“After examination, we have concluded that it has basically met the requirements according to the relevant laws and regulations,” Zhang told a news conference.
The comments largely echoed previous Chinese statements, but are likely to be seen as good news for the company as Beijing has been coy about its long-term future in China.
Google is trying to achieve a delicate balance of ending self-censorship of searches, while holding onto its business foothold in a country where control of information has been key to ensuring the Communist Party’s decades in power.
Google’s market share in China continued to slip in the second quarter, falling to 27.3% from 29.5% in the first, according to data from iResearch.
Before its high-profile spat with Beijing, Google was slowly gaining ground on China’s top search engine Baidu. At the end of last year, it market share was 32.8%.
Then in January Google unexpectedly warned that might quit China over censorship concerns and after suffering a hacker attack that it said came from within the country. Eventually it terminated Google.cn and started rerouting users to its unfiltered Hong Kong site.
In early July the company ended automatic redirection, saying Beijing was unhappy about the system and would not renew Google’s operating licence if it continued.
Visitors are now invited to click through to the Hong Kong page instead of being sent straight there. China’s firewall remains in place however, meaning most sensitive sites turned up on searches are inaccessible from within the country’s borders.
Reuters
