Google is making its way back to mainland China. After a tiff with the Chinese government the Google had shut down its search engine in the country. The issue between the two censorship problems, this had resulted in a six month tussle that forced the site to redirect the user through Hong Kong. The company has got its license renewed as mentioned on the company’s official blog.
The renewed license draws into the year 2012 and will be subjected to yearly approval by the country’s government. “We look forward to continuing to provide Web search and local products to our users in China,” it wrote. The company spokesman Tokyo-based Jessica Powell when quizzed declined to make public any compromises that the site has made in order to get its license back. The company could not ignore the country that represents the largest internet market. However the Chinese government forces tough control over the content tat is posted over the net. The largest search engine had objected to this idea of censorship. This censorship reflected a curb on the freedom of speech and expression of the people. The monitoring system blocks all overseas services such as Facebook and YouTube. The censorship also called as the “Great Firewall” limits Chinese Web user’s access to information on topics ranging from Tibet’s independence to the 1989 crackdown on democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
The shares of the site had taken quite a beating on this account. Besides this the company was also loosing out on other search engines based in the country.
Google last week resubmitted a license renewal application on the grounds that the Mountain View, California-based company would now point users to an unfiltered Hong Kong site instead of redirecting them automatically.
The government estimates China had 384 million Internet users at the end of 2009 which is more than the total U.S. population. And the experts say that the number may grow to 840 million by 2013. It would have been a fool on Google’s part to loose out on this vast untapped resource.