Google quits censorship in China

This is excellent, great work Google.


"Google says it will stop censoring search results in China

Google.cn users will be re-routed to an uncensored site in Hong Kong

Search giant says move is legal and it will be monitoring to see if access is blocked

Move comes after Google announced in January that it had been hacked"


http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/22/g...ex.html?hpt=T2

Google on Monday announced it has stopped censoring search results in China. The announcement came amid speculation that the search giant would pull out of China entirely and sets up a showdown with the Communist leadership there. In a 3:03 p.m. ET post on its official blog, Google said it stopped running the censored Google.cn service on Monday and was routing its Chinese users to an uncensored version of Google based in Hong Kong. "We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement," said Senior Vice President David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, on the blog. Google hopes the move "will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China," Drummond wrote. "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," he added. Google said it would be carefully monitoring to see if access to the site is blocked in mainland China. Google launched Google.cn, its China effort, in 2006 amid complaints that its devotion to Web freedom was being subverted by a willingness to comply with Chinese censorship in return for access to a huge potential customer base. The company, whose slogan is "don't be evil," countered that by operating in limited form, it gave Chinese users more information than than they would have had otherwise. Google also hoped its presence would speed a move toward online freedom in China. In January, Google announced that the company and at least 20 others were victims of a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" originating in China in mid-December, evidently to gain access to the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The company said the attacker or attackers gained access to the header -- or subject-line information -- from the e-mails of two human rights activists through the Google network. As a result, the company said, it was no longer willing to abide by the filters that the Chinese government demanded on certain searches before allowing Google to operate in the country. For a brief time afterward, Google.cn was retrieving results for sensitive topics including the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square, the Dalai Lama and the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. But about a day later, search results appeared to return to normal. Google -- with it's China-specific Google.cn search engine -- has become the preferred search tool for about 13 percent of Chinese Web users, according to a state-sponsored survey. Baidu.com, a government-friendly Chinese search engine, dominates the market in mainland China with about 77 percent of users preferring it, according to the survey. Google's announcement had been widely anticipated. Internet companies operating in China face a March 31 deadline to renew licenses to operate in the country, according to the Beijing Communications Administration.