BEIJING—Chinese regulators renewed a key license for Google Inc., suggesting that authorities continue to accept the way the U.S. Internet giant has restructured its local operations to stop censoring its own Chinese-language search results.
Wang Lijian, director of the news office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, a main Internet regulator, said the government renewed for another year the Internet Content Provider license that Google uses in China, a license required of all locally operated websites.
China regulates Internet content in part through issuing licenses and overseeing companies like Google and its chief Chinese competitor Baidu Inc. Authorities also block or limit access to websites based overseas.
Google scaled back its China operations last year after a public spat with authorities over its concerns about censorship and hacking, announcing that it would stop filtering its content as required by local regulations. The move caused users to fear the company would discontinue its Chinese-language services entirely, or that the government would retaliate by banning its websites within the country.
Instead, Google began redirecting users from its Chinese domain address, Google.cn, to a website in Hong Kong whose search results Google doesn't filter.
Foreign companies aren't allowed to own Internet content licenses directly in China. The license Google uses is owned by a Chinese partner. Authorities are believed to have given the license an approval last year, also.
The fact that Google's overseas Web services have remained accessible in China was already a sign that regulators had accepted the Hong Kong workaround. Google continues to earn revenue from Chinese advertisers seeking to reach users abroad.
But the government continues to censor the search results of Google's overseas sites for users inside the country, and access to the overseas sites and to its Gmail service have become increasingly unstable for users in China, causing Google's share of traffic and revenue in the country to fall.
Google continues to use its mainland Chinese address for music and certain other services, without redirecting users to Hong Kong. But uncertainty remains for its online map services, which Google is still in talks with the regulators about, a Google spokesman said.
Wang Lijian, director of the news office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, a main Internet regulator, said the government renewed for another year the Internet Content Provider license that Google uses in China, a license required of all locally operated websites.
China regulates Internet content in part through issuing licenses and overseeing companies like Google and its chief Chinese competitor Baidu Inc. Authorities also block or limit access to websites based overseas.
Google scaled back its China operations last year after a public spat with authorities over its concerns about censorship and hacking, announcing that it would stop filtering its content as required by local regulations. The move caused users to fear the company would discontinue its Chinese-language services entirely, or that the government would retaliate by banning its websites within the country.
Instead, Google began redirecting users from its Chinese domain address, Google.cn, to a website in Hong Kong whose search results Google doesn't filter.
Foreign companies aren't allowed to own Internet content licenses directly in China. The license Google uses is owned by a Chinese partner. Authorities are believed to have given the license an approval last year, also.
The fact that Google's overseas Web services have remained accessible in China was already a sign that regulators had accepted the Hong Kong workaround. Google continues to earn revenue from Chinese advertisers seeking to reach users abroad.
But the government continues to censor the search results of Google's overseas sites for users inside the country, and access to the overseas sites and to its Gmail service have become increasingly unstable for users in China, causing Google's share of traffic and revenue in the country to fall.
Google continues to use its mainland Chinese address for music and certain other services, without redirecting users to Hong Kong. But uncertainty remains for its online map services, which Google is still in talks with the regulators about, a Google spokesman said.
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