Google has had its ICP licence renewed by the Chinese government, soothing concerns over the search facility being made completely unusable from within the country.
The search giant had refused to censor results on Google.cn earlier this year, leading the company to shut its Chinese portal and redirect Google.cn users to the Hong Kong version for uncensored action.
Google opted to stop rerouting users to Google.com.hk last month before applying for a licence renewal.
"We are very pleased that the Government has renewed our ICP licence and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China," a brief statement on the Google blog read.
Users who head to Google.cn now will have the choice of either going to Google.com.hk to carry out a web search or use a small number of services running on the Chinese version, such as music and text translate.
An earlier blog post from David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer at Google, had expressed the firm's desire to continue to work in the country.
"As a company we aspire to make information available to users everywhere, including China. It's why we have worked so hard to keep Google.cn alive, as well as to continue our research and development work in China," Drummond said.
Google had threatened to leave China altogether earlier this year over censorship issues and following claims it had been hit by hack attacks emanating from the country.
