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Google Offers Chinese 'Compromise,' Won't Auto-Direct Users to Hong Kong Site

by Amar Toor on June 29, 2010 at 12:40 PM

google china logoSince withdrawing its services from the Chinese mainland due to concerns over the governmental censorship of online content, Google has been rerouting Chinese searches to its uncensored search page based out of Hong Kong. The Chinese government, of course, is none too pleased with Google's clever maneuver, and, in response, is threatening to reject the company's application to renew its Internet Content Provider license. Now, however, Google is reportedly offering to stop redirecting China's users to the Hong Kong page, in a desperate attempt to curry favor with an apparently intransigent regime.

Instead of automatically finding themselves on the Hong Kong page, visitors to Google's mainland China page will soon see only a link that leads to the unfiltered page. According to the New York Times, the company is hopeful that this "compromise" solution will placate Chinese authorities, and convince them to renew Google's license. If they don't, though, Google would lose all right to operate within the country, effectively shutting it off from the world's largest market of Internet users.

"This new approach is consistent with our commitment not to self censor and, we believe, with local law," Google's chief legal officer David Drummond wrote in a blog post. "We are therefore hopeful that our license will be renewed on this basis so we can continue to offer our Chinese users services via google.cn." Others, however, aren't so sure that Google's proposed compromise will have such a palliative effect on the standoff. "If the Chinese government isn't happy with them running uncensored search results out of the Hong Kong site -- I don't see why they'll be any happier just because it becomes one click away," Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan argues.

In light of China's recent public promise to maintain a tight grip on domestic Internet services, Sullivan may very well be right. The country is clearly taking a very binary, black-and-white approach to the issue, and is unlikely to bite on any option that doesn't completely conform to its cultural and political protocol. There's certainly a legitimate difference between automatically directing someone to a page, and allowing them the choice of going there. But based on recent history, we have the strong feeling that even the concept of individual choice is anathema to China's political ethos. [From: Google, via: New York Times]

Tags: censorship, china, google, googleinchina, HongKong, search, top, web

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