We’ve discussed the topic of Google’s presence in China a couple times, and it looks like it’s time to revisit the topic again.  It appears China has decided to renew its license with Google to continue using its search address Google.cn. In March, Google had begun redirecting search queries from China’s mainland to a version of its search engine that is not censored in Hong Kong.  Google stopped redirecting two weeks after the government indicated it would not renew its license if the company continued this practice.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt commented at a news conference, “Our operations in China are completely at the discretion of the Chinese government.  I don’t want anyone to be confused about that.”

During the standoff with Beijing, Google did lose some of its search share to other rivals such as Baidu.com. Other Google services continue to be popular such as its email service, Gmail.  Other services provided by Google such as YouTube continue to be blocked by China.

Under the renewed license, Google.cn requires visitors to click on an image in order to be redirected to the Hong Kong site for web searches.  Music search features, product searches and translation services have also recently been made accessible from Google.cn itself recently.

It will be interesting to see if the new 2-click requirement for Google will restrict its commercial ability to make the ad revenue it has long profited from.