Hong Kong manoevre
The long-awaited Google Chinese move has happened. In a blog post, chief legal officer David Drummond announced users to google.cn will be redirected to the Hong Kong site - google.com.hk - which is free of censorship.
Ever since China took over Hong Kong from us in 1997 it has allowed it a lot more autonomy than the rest of the country, including a lack of web censorship. "...it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China," said Drummond. "We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services."
Google has also created a webpage that details which Google services are available in mainland China. It looks like China isn't too impressed with this manoeuvre. Xinhuanet.com reports the following quote from a Chinese Internet official:
"Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks. This is totally wrong. We're uncompromisingly opposed to the politicization of commercial issues, and express our discontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conducts."
The reason Google has given for stopping the censorship of its Chinese search results is the cyber attacks on Google at the end of last year, which Google discovered were designed to access the Gmail accounts of human rights activists.
