According to a Google update last night, the company will no longer be automatically redirecting search traffic in China from Google.cn to Google’s unfiltered Hong Kong page, Google.com.hk. Chinese officials were displeased, obviously, with Google’s past refusal to comply with censorship on google.cn, and the implication is that if the search engine had continued this tactic to provide uncensored results to Chinese internet users, their Internet Content Provider license would not be renewed on June 30.

Without an ICP license, a commercial site like Google.cn would not be allowed to operate in China. So what is the inevitable compromise?

Google gave everyone fair warning, and earlier today the search giant did it.  Google.cn, the Chinese portal of Google.com, now redirects to the entirely uncensored search engine Google.com.hk, the Google of Hong Kong.

Google said in January that it was no longer comfortable censoring its search results on Google.cn at the request of the Chinese government, and would be allowing access to an uncensored search engine in China.  The Chinese government responded that such an act would be considered “unfriendly” and “irresponsible” and that there would be consequences.

This past weekend, the Financial Times caused a stir when it reported that there was a “99.9 per cent chance” that Google was going to pull out of China, according to a Google insider. Now, despite official denials, Google is dropping hints left and right that it actually intends to do so.

To the left: it appears that Google has stopped censoring some of the content that it has for years, including the infamous photo of the man blocking the tank during the protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989. (Reproduced in Google.cn image search results, above.)  To the right: last night, Google missed a deadline to reregister as an Internet Content Provider in China, a necessary designation under Chinese law to provide search services within the country.

There may be a “99.9 per cent” chance that Google is going to shut down its Chinese engine Google.cn, as we learned this weekend, and that presents its advertising partners with a tricky choice: Stick with the company with whom they’ve enjoyed past success and risk bannination in the Chinese market, or defect to Chinese search engines at the cost of familiarity — and freedom from censorship.

Now, according to the New York Times, the Chinese authorities have put their thumbs on the scale: They’ve warned Google’s partners that to play ball in China, they’re going to need to censor their search results, with or without Google.

Sometime in December 2009, Google fended off a “sophisticated and targeted attack” in China, the goal of which seemed to be to access the accounts of Chinese human rights activists.  This attack, and other attempts at the surveillance of human rights activists in China that were revealed during Google’s investigation into the attack, lead Google to announce a change of policy.

From a January Google Blog post:

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Well, as things so often do with large governments, a few weeks has become a few months, and yesterday, the Chinese minister for industry and information technology confirmed that if Google violated Chinese law it would be considered “unfriendly,” “irresponsible,” and “would have to bear the consequences.”

According to the Financial Times, whose source is “familiar with the company’s thinking,” Google is now preparing to close Google.cn:

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