If everything seems to be going right, you obviously don’t know what the hell is going on.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/14/AR2010081402009.html?wpisrc=nl_headline

By Dan Gallagher, MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Google Inc. said Friday that its license to operate its Internet-search services in China was renewed by the country’s authorities, giving a boost to the company’s shares.

The announcement appeared to be a step toward resolving a bitter dispute between China and Google over the Internet giant’s decision not to censor results in the Asian nation.

“We are very pleased that the government has renewed our (Internet) license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China,” the company said in a brief statement.

Shares of Google (GOOG) were up more than 1.5% to $463.95 in heavy trading.

The stock has lost roughly a quarter of its value this year — in part due to concerns about its outlook in one of the world’s fastest growing technology markets.

Google stunned the tech world in January when it announced that it would no longer censor results in China, and would redirect users of its China site to its Hong Kong search engine.

However, David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, said in a blog post that “it’s clear from conversations we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable.”

Drummond wrote that the company risked losing its license if it continued redirecting users.

As an alternative, Google said it will direct users to a landing page on Google’s China site that links to the company’s site in Hong Kong “where users can conduct web search or continue to use Google.cn services like music and text translate, which we can provide locally without filtering.”

“This approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on Google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page,” Drummond wrote.

Haim Mendelson, a professor of electronic business and commerce at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, said both sides appeared to have reached a compromise solution.

“Technically, what it means is that it’s the user’s choice,” he said in an interview. “The solution just makes a subtle difference that it’s not Google that does the redirection, but the user. So they can say, ‘Look, we’re not doing it.’”

More importantly, he added, Google and China may have found an opportunity to settle what had turned into a very public dispute.

“It was in Google’s best interest and in China’s best interest to settle this dispute,” he said. “It’s mostly that they couldn’t settle it for the simple reason that they were talking about it too much. … My guess is over time they found time to use back channels to settle the dispute.”

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt had said on Thursday that he expected China to renew the license. See full story.

Baidu.com (BIDU), Google’s main rival in China, saw its own shares dip more than 2% Friday. The company was considered the main beneficiary of Google’s withdrawal from the market.

Thank you for your interest.

As the G20 summit nears in November, the World economy seems to have finally learned to put more focus on the Asian market.

I will be updating you with more interesting article soon.

Thank you once again,

Sincerely yours,

Youngsoo Luke Kwon

p.s: BTW, sorry for the double post. Seems like the website will not allow me to correct my past mistakes.