China renews Google's internet licence

Google's internet licence has been renewed in China, after the company stopped automatically redirecting Google.cn users to its "uncensored" servers in Hong Kong.

The world's largest ad broker added a brief update to its 28 June blog post in which it confirmed the licence renewal.

"We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP licence and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China," it said.

On 22 March this year Mountain View closed its China-based search engine and announced that it would redirect Google.cn visitors to its Hong Kong-based engine, Google.com.hk, where it would provide uncensored search results in simplified Chinese.

At the end of last month Google agreed to halt the automatic rerouting of its China search engine users to Hong Kong after Beijing officials threatened to not renew the firm's internet licence if it continued with the switcheroo.

In effect, Google has now outsourced censorship to Beijing. ®