Google gets licence to operate from Chinese government

Google has confirmed that the Chinese government has granted the company licence to operate online in the country.

Google's Internet Content Provider license (ICP), without which no commercial web site can be operated, was due for renewal on June 30 but it was only after extensive negations that the company was signed off to do business in China.

“We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China,” chief legal officer David Drummond said on Google's blog.

Reports on the negotiations suggest Google agreed to stop automatically redirecting people to its Hong Kong site and will instead add a link to the site instead, so users could still get unfiltered Google searches. Some sites will however still blocked by the so-called Great Firewall of China.

Wall Street reacted well to the news and Google's stock rose over four per cent, even though China accounts for barely one per cent of Google's revenues.