Gǔgē still hogs the limelight. This subsidiary of Google, Inc., also known as Google China has been constantly running into murky waters since the year started.

January dawned with Google’s dilemma of a potential shutdown in China. Their main issue had much to do with censoring search results under the Chinese law, which was making them feel restrained. Two months later, they claimed to have found the perfect solution and started redirecting users from google.cn to google.com.hk, its Hong Kong website.

After a bit of silence, the Chinese government has responded. Not surprisingly, they do not seem too elated. But after the big talk, Google is serving us its own irony by backing down from its earlier stance. It has now declared “a new approach” to China, threatened by a warning of losing its license to operate in the country altogether.

“They made it clear to us that they did not think the redirect was acceptable,” said a Google spokeswoman, Jessica Powell. She refused to divulge the provided reasons though.

The realization conveniently came to Google on the eve of their Internet Content Provider (ICP) expiry in China.

David Drummond, Google’s Chief Legal Officer, posted a blog on Monday saying, “This redirect [to Hong Kong], 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.

“That’s a prospect dreaded by many of our Chinese users, who have been vocal about their desire to keep Google.cn alive.”

After the said changes are applied, Chinese users will be sent to a “landing page” instead, allowing them the option of going to the Hong Kong site by clicking anywhere on it.

“Over the next few days we’ll end the redirect entirely, taking all our Chinese users to our new landing page—and today we re-submitted our ICP license renewal application based on this approach. This new approach is consistent with our commitment not to self censor and, we believe, with local law. We are therefore hopeful that our license will be renewed,” said Mr. Drummond.

Speculations are on as to the success of this new move of Google’s in a market primarily dominated by Baidu. But we do hope Google can save its face, for its own sake if not for ours.