BEIJING: China gave Google Inc approval to keep operating its Chinese search page, resolving a months-long censorship dispute that had threatened its future in the world’s top Internet market.

The move, announced by Google on Friday, removes another thorn in U.S.-China relations and reflects Beijing’s desire to be seen as friendly to major foreign companies in spite of ideological differences, analysts said.

Shares of Google rose 2.4 percent as the news erased some concerns that China would eject the company for taking a hard line against Internet censorship. But analysts said Google’s position in China remained fragile and that the country likely would account for a fraction of Google’s revenue for some time.

“It’s good for Google that they still have some presence. But they’re clearly in a more compromised competitive position,” said Ryan Jacob of the Jacob Internet fund, which holds Google shares.

“Google is going to have a very difficult time gaining share, and will probably lose share over time.”

Google embarrassed China in January by drawing global attention to Beijing’s Internet censorship practices, a function of the government’s belief that keeping a tight grip on information helps it maintain control.

The Internet company also accused Chinese hackers of orchestrating a sophisticated cyber attack on Google and other major U.S. companies.

Google then declared that it was no longer willing to offer censored search results. This exacerbated tensions between Washington and Beijing, which were also sparring over China’s currency, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, and Tibet.

Washington has forcefully argued against Internet censorship and demanded that Beijing investigate and explain the alleged cyber attacks.

Over the months, tensions between the two countries have eased. But analysts said that while the United States would likely welcome the Google agreement, deeper divisions over freedom of information, Internet policy and cyber security would likely continue.

Google said on Friday that China had renewed its webpage license, which means it can continue to run the Chinese language search site google.cn.

Last week, Google offered Beijing a face-saving compromise: it stopped automatically rerouting google.cn to its uncensored Hong Kong site. Now, visitors to google.cn must click once to go to the Hong Kong page.