China Renews Google’s Website License

Google announced Friday that the Chinese government has renewed its license to carry on running its Web site in China.

The rocky relationship between Google and Beijing had cast distrust as to whether the license would be renewed. The tension became public in January when Google said it would stop censoring search results in China and as well pointed a finger at Beijing as the source of cyberattacks on Google and extra U.S. companies.

An update to the company's official blog by David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, announced the license renewal: "We are extremely pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we seem forward to continuing to give web search and local products to our users in China."

Drummond said that in the after that few days it will take all Chinese users to a new Google.cn landing page, ending redirects to Google's Hong Kong site.

There was no instant word from China's Information Ministry about the license renewal.