Google made good Monday on its promise to stop filtering search results in China, and is redirecting all visitors to Google.cn to its unfiltered Chinese search engine in Hong Kong. But China is certain to get the last word by blocking Mainland users from reaching the Hong Kong servers or even more drastically, taking back control of the internet address Google has used there for four years.
Now a search on June 4, the day of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, returns 226 million results. Formerly that search, and thousands of other terms like it, had limited results and a notification to users that search results had been hidden due to the rules of China’s Communist government.
Google shocked the business world on Jan. 12 when it publicly announced it was no longer willing to abide by its 2006 deal with the Chinese government after it was the target of hacker attacks the company attributed to China. Google went into China with hopes that censorship would lessen over time, but in 2009, China’s leadership instead increased demands on search companies and tried to mandate state-run filtering software on all PCs.
Google attempted to negotiate with the Chinese government, hoping to horse trade increased filtering of pornography and gambling sites for removal of political filters. But according to a blog post from Google vice president David Drummond, that was not acceptable.
Drummond wrote Monday:
Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. 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. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced—it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. 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.
China, which controls the .cn top level domain, will likely respond by revoking Google’s .cn domain name. That would end the current redirect to the servers in Hong Kong at www.google.com.hk. China blocked YouTube last spring in response to videos of its crackdown in Tibet, and also blocks popular social networking services such as Facebook.
Though Hong Kong reunited with China in 1997, it retains a large measure of independence. The government could use its firewalls to block direct access to Google’s Hong Kong servers.
But Google’s decision to redirect to .hk rather than to .com puts the Chinese government in an interesting bind. Google hasn’t technically violated the rules by uncensoring results on .cn, so it would be very aggressive of the government to revoke the domain name.
The redirect puts the onus on the Chinese government to act — and it would be seen as banning Google. Moreover, in order to prevent uncensored results, China would have to block a Hong Kong-based service, which is politically harder since Hong Kong is technically part of China.
While many have applauded Google’s principled stance, even the staunchest opponents of the Chinese regime acknowledge that Google’s exit has drawbacks for the Chinese people, since its results were markedly less censored than rivals like Baidu.
Leslie Harris, the president of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington D.C., applauded Google’s commitment to “enable China’s people with unfiltered access to robust sources of information from all over the world.
“Whether the Chinese people will be able to take advantage of Google search now rests squarely with the Chinese government,” Harris said. “If China allows access to unfiltered search, it will be a substantial win for global internet freedom and for the Chinese people. If China blocks access, it will finally make clear to the Chinese people who is pulling the levers of censorship in the country.”
Google.cn had about 20 percent of the market in China, trailing Baidu. Revenue for China is estimated at around $500 million a year, a not insubstantial chunk of Google’s $20 billion annual revenue from ad sales. Google said it intends to keep its ad sales business, as well as a research arm, in China.
Initial shareholder response was muted: The announcement was made nearly 90 minutes before the stock market closed, and Google shares closed down less a fraction of one percent — $2.50 — on a marginally up day. In after-hours trading, they were down another $1.50.
The company also launched a censorship monitoring page that lets people see which Google services are available in China that day.
Photo: A worker cleans the sign in front of Google China headquarters in Beijing, Monday, March 22, 2010. Google will shift its search engine for China off the mainland and maintain other operations in the country. It’s an attempt to balance its stance against censorship with its desire to profit from an explosively growing internet market. Ng Han Guan/Associated Press
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