Google Moves More Services Back to China

Google has been struggling to stay in the Chinese market even as it made it’s well publicized exit. While the search services may not be housed in China anymore, Google wants to serve the hundreds of millions of Internet users in the country just like it always has. The latest hurdle is Google’s Internet Content Provider (ICP) license which has expired in the country.

Without it, Google can’t run a commercial website, like Google.cn, even if it redirects traffic to outside of the country. In an effort to appease the government in the hopes of getting a license renewal, Google has stopped automatically redirecting users and is serving a new landing page instead.

At first the landing page was nothing more than a banner ad for Google’s Hong Kong website, but the page has been updated and now includes some sections that are powered by local servers, like Music, Translation and Shopping. The Music service is specific to China and is not the rumored Google Music service slated for launch this fall.

Interestingly, the page also lists an ICP number which lead to initial speculation that Google may have resolved its issues in the country. However, Google has now responded and said that the ICP number on the homepage is the current, expired one and that there are no new developments in the situation.

“What you are seeing on the landing page is just our existing ICP license number at the bottom of the landing page. We have no news to report on our side and are still waiting to hear from the government,” Google told The Next Web.

In early April, Google started redirecting Chinese visitors to its local, Google.cn, website to Google.com.hk after the failed negotiations with the authorities to provide unfiltered search results in the country. However, the move was criticized by China, though there have been no measures taken against Google apart from the regular content filtering that applies to all foreign websites. Now though, China hasn’t responded, at least not publicly, to Google’s application for a renewed ICP license.