One of Silicon Valley’s favorite parlor games is to guess when Google will try to return to mainland China, a market it left in 2010 over concerns about censorship.

On Wednesday, the company announced a small step forward in doing business in China when it said it would offer Chinese developers a way to sell mobile applications outside of China through the Play Store, the portal where users of phones running Google’s Android software buy games, movies and other content.

The offer applies only to developers, meaning that even though Chinese entrepreneurs will now be able to sell their applications on the Play Store around the world, Chinese consumers still won’t have access to Google services, including the Play Store.

While China’s major internet companies have not had great success abroad, some of its smaller app developers have. For instance, Cheetah Mobile, which makes mobile security software and says it has more than 10 million monthly average users in the United States, listed on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this year. The new initiative will make it easier for companies like Cheetah to do business abroad.

When consumers elsewhere go to Google’s Play Store, they see a little interface where they can download apps like the popular Angry Birds series of games. But, like a delivery man driving up to a loading dock behind a store, developers have a separate interface, the so-called developer console, where they can do things like submit an app, say how much they want to charge for it and route whatever money they make to a local bank account.

It’s the loading dock piece that Google is bringing to China. Google already has this kind of developer support in 60 countries. Before China, the most recent entrants were Lebanon, Jordan, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar and Venezuela.

The Play Store is available in about twice as many countries as those that have developer support. What’s unusual about Google’s decision regarding China is that it is extending support to developers even though Chinese consumers still can’t get into the Play Store  — highlighting the company’s delicate dance with the world’s second largest economy. (the new york times)