Google acts to retain its licence in China

Google is to review the way it provides services to users in China in response to renewed pressure from the Chinese authorities.

In a blog post, Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, said that striking a balance between providing information and staying within the law was not easy – particularly since the firm decided to stop kowtowing to the government and censoring search results.

Currently, Google gets round Chinese government restrictions by redirecting users from Google.cn to Google.com.hk – its Hong Kong search engine.

However, Drummond argued that while this is proving acceptable to individual users it has not pleased the authorities in Beijing.

"It’s clear from conversations we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable—and that if we continue redirecting users our Internet Content Provider licence will not be renewed," he explained.

Should this licence not be renewed, Google will have to close its .cn site, lose the redirect and essentially "go dark in China".

As an alternative, Google is considering offering Chinese users a landing page within the .cn domain that links to the Hong Kong version.

"This approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on Google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page," Drummond explained.

Since the hack attack that put a wedge between Google and China, the search company has struggled to retain a footing in the country, which already has a more popular search engine in the form of Baidu.