Google’s long-running battle against the censorship restrictions imposed by the Chinese government has reached its crunch point.  Google’s Internet Content Provider licence expires at the end of today- and should the internet giant fail to re-negotiate renewal terms with the Chinese government officials, the company’s presence in China will cease to exist.

The problem is easy to pinpoint. China wants to retain firm control over the content their citizens read and watch. Google offers a search engine facility which provides global users access to a gigantic amount of content, ranging from the mainstream media to obscure blogs. Quite simply, Google and China are not a match made in heaven.

Google currently redirect their Chinese users from the google.cn website to its Hong Kong page, after a complex hacking of their computer systems (originating from China) escalated tensions back in January. The attacks targeted the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, as well as the computers and infrastructures of Google and a number of other U.S. firms. Since March, Google have refused to self-censor itself in China, thus causing a very uneasy stand-off.  

So it is with a begrudging reluctance that Google have decided to break the current impasse, and offer a possible solution to resolve the situation.  

Failure to regain the ICP licence would trigger far greater problems for Google- not only would they lose their presence in China, but the company business strategy and global reputation would be heavily damaged. Google’s boast of ‘organising the world’s information’ would also look a little silly, especially when up to a sixth of the world’s population would have no access to their website.

Publically, however, Google’s Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, pointed to the company’s commitment to serving the Chinese people as their primary concern.

“[The closure of Google is] a prospect dreaded by many of our Chinese users, who have been vocal about their desire to keep Google.cn alive,” he said on Google’s blog.

So far a small percentage of Chinese Google users are being transferred to a new landing page on Google.cn (that links to Google.com.hk) and a full transfer will be completed upon the awarding of the ICP licence.

The Google.cn page is far more basic than other variations offered by the Google brand- the page displays the image of the Google logo and clicking any area of the page redirects users to the Hong Kong website. Chinese users will be able to conduct web searches and continue to use Google services like music and text translation, as they can be provided locally without filtering.

But will it prove enough to persuade the Chinese government to give Google another chance? So far- silence…

 “This new approach is consistent with our commitment not to self censor and, we believe, with local law,” adds David Drummond. “We are therefore hopeful that our licence will be renewed on this basis so we can continue to offer our Chinese users services via Google.cn.”

We shall see!