Recently, Google has been redirecting mainland Chinese users to the Hong Kong search engine to allow access to unfiltered search. The Chinese government, however, is no longer accepting the redirect and has asked Google to put an end to it all. Should Google refuse, China will not renew the Internet Content Provider license and that means Google must shut down Google.cn for good.
To tackle this problem, Google is planning to redirect a small percentage of mainland China users to a landing page on Google.cn which will link to Google.com.hk.
According to Google, “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…As a company we aspire to make information available to users everywhere, including China. It’s why we have worked so hard to keep Google.cn alive, as well as to continue our research and development work in China.”
The Chinese government has yet to speak out about the new strategy and if they do not like the idea, it may be the end of Google in China. Currently, mainland Chinese users can only search for certain topics, but cannot access the websites that come up on results pages. Google continues to stand behind its commitment to making information available to everyone, but China’s push towards censorship is continuing to present challenges for Google.
