Victor Squire's List: Google

• Mr. Schmidt,
• The Internet giant Google said Friday that the Beijing government had renewed its license to operate a Web site in mainland China
• ending months of tension after the company stopped censoring search results here and moved some operations out of the country.
• We are very pleased that the government has renewed our I.C.P. license,” Mr. Drummond wrote referring to an Internet content provider license. “And we look forward to continuing to provide Web search and local products to our users in China.”
• Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, said Friday that the renewal “was the outcome we were hoping for.”
• Mr. Schmidt, who told reporters on Thursday that the company expected to obtain the renewal, said that he did not know China’s decision would come so soon and was informed of the decision early Friday. He had expected the decision to come down within 24 to 48 hours.
• Mr. Schmidt,
• “We’ll keep doing what we’re doing, and they’ll keep doing what they’re doing,”

  • Huh what does that mean
• If the license had not been renewed, Google would have effectively been forced to shut down its Web site, google.cn, in China. With the renewal, however, Google can continue offering limited services in China and direct users to the company’s uncensored Hong Kong-based Chinese language search engine, google.com.hk. Hong Kong, a former British colony that is now a special administrative region of China, is governed separately from the mainland. Under the current setup in mainland China, users can conduct a Google search and see the results, but often they cannot open the links.
• The company said it would also stop censoring search results, which it had agreed to do when it first began to operate in China several years ago. The Chinese government insists that its citizens’ access to the Internet be stripped of offensive and some politically sensitive material.

  • So google did this before January cyber-attacks 

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