Google no longer allowed to redirect Chinese traffic to Hong Kong

Google writes they will no longer be automatically redirecting traffic of the Google.cn site to Google.com.hk because Chinese officials weren't happy with this approach and threatened to revoke Google's ICP license, which is necessary to operate a commercial website in China. Little has changed though, instead of automatically redirecting traffic the search giant created a landing page, which can only be used to access the Hong Kong-based version of Google.

Ever since we launched Google.cn, our search engine for mainland Chinese users, we have done our best to increase access to information while abiding by Chinese law. This has not always been an easy balance to strike, especially since our January announcement that we were no longer willing to censor results on Google.cn.

We currently automatically redirect everyone using Google.cn to Google.com.hk, our Hong Kong search engine. This redirect, which offers unfiltered search in simplified Chinese, has been working well for our users and for Google. However, 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 license will not be renewed (it’s up for renewal on June 30). Without an ICP license, we can’t operate a commercial website like Google.cn—so Google would effectively go dark in China.