Going, going, gone! China farewells Google.cn

23/03/10 posted by Liz Niland

They’ve done it. After more than two months of will-they-won’t-they speculation, Google have pulled out of censored search in mainland China, directing traffic from Google.cn to the uncensored Google.com.hk.

As announced on Google’s official blog, "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." Notably, the posting by David Drummond, Google’s Chief Legal Officer calls for no blame to be pushed upon the local employees of the company’s operations in China. Google also says they will attempt to maintain sales and development teams in the country.

While Google state that the redirect to their Hong Kong servers is "entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China", The Guardian’s blow-by-blow coverage suggests that users in mainland China are still being restricted with what sites they can access - even when the search results come via the HK domain.

Whether the Chinese government will block mainland access to Google.com.hk completely, remains to be seen. Interestingly though, SEO guru Danny Sullivan points out similar situations across Europe where searches on local domains are censored (Nazi information on Google.de in Germany for example), but searches performed on Google.com do not face the same restrictions.

Opinions from the other side of the Great Firewall of China are divided. In a report from China’s state media service, Xinhua, a Chinese official is quoted as saying "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."

On the other hand, just hours before Google’s action, a group of Google China users expressed their concerns in an open letter to both their government and the search giant. The letter says that although censorship may be required in some cases, it should be by way of a transparent process. The writers also call for the Chinese government to consider the rights of its citizens: "If Google.cn were to no longer exist, or if China were to further block other Google services, has the Chinese government considered how their blocking of foreign websites and censorship of domestic websites violates Chinese citizens' right to scientific, educational, environmental, clean energy and other information?"

Clearly, the implications of this situation will become apparent over the coming period once more developments come to hand. Undoubtedly though, Chinese internet users will be the ultimate victims from this: Google will lose millions of clicks and the Chinese government can be as angered as they like, but it’s the students, the businesspeople, and the general Chinese population that will be the hardest hit.