Did Google Forget Its Chinese License?

Surprises

from the ah,-the-fine-print dept

While most of the world is focused on how pissed off the US government is about Google’s move into China, it would appear that the Chinese government may not be all that pleased either. We’d already reported an earlier claim that Google’s China version had been blocked in the country, while the American version was still available. It’s not clear if anything has changed on that, but a newspaper in Beijing may have the reason. According to the paper, Google failed to obtain the necessary license to offer an internet service in China. However, a Google spokesperson responds that while Google doesn’t have one directly, it has partnered with a Chinese firm that does have the license — a practice it claims is common. Either way, this seems like a minor bureaucratic point that could be corrected (if anything is actually wrong) pretty quickly.