I read a Washington Post piece by Keith B. Richburg that Google’s license to operate in China has been renewed, surprising many—even me. I thought China would punish Google for all the noise over accusations of being hacked by China and stirring the Western criticism pot about China’s Net Nanny.
“We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license, and we look forward to continuing to provide Web search and local products to our users in China,” Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, wrote on the company’s blog.
To get this approval, it appears that Google stopped redirecting mainland Chinese to Google’s site in Hong Kong, where people wouldn’t have to deal with the mainland Net Nanny.
The Wall Street Journal Blogs – Digits reports that this is a step back for Google since the affair lost them market share in China. Digits also explains the reason Google backed away from its threats not to censor its search engine was due to future profits by staying in the largest Internet market in the world.
The message I read at The Technology Liberation Front (cool name) is that it is important for American companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to stay in China. If they leave, their influence on China becoming a politically and economically freer nation would not exist.
The result, future profits defeated idealism.
See Google Recycled
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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