Google’s burning Chinese bridges

Five days ago, I reported that Google was (finally!) getting some cojones dealing with China.

Now, I’m very, very happy to say that the Googlies have stopped dancing with the devil. They’re re-directing the google.cn address – that’s the Google address used inside China – to google.com.hk. That’s the Hong Kong version of the Google search engine.

You can see for yourself. Go ahead and type google.cn into your favorite web browser.

At this point, the Chinese government authorities are not blocking access to google.com.hk. So folks inside China who thought they were going to the censored google.cn are being automatically routed to an uncensored version of Google, in various Chinese languages.

The New York Times has a good overview.

UPDATE: Looks like the PRC authorities have started filtering search results from the Hong Kong site. Washington Post article here. This is getting more interesting by the minute.

Is Google getting cojones in China?

News from MSNBC that Google is finally showing some previously-blocked pictures in response to searches on Google.cn.

A week ago, the Financial Times reported that Google wass “99.9% certain” to close down its censored Chinese search engine.  Now, it appears as if the engine is still chugging along, with some of the old censorship gone.

It’s refreshing to see pictures of the “tank man” at Tiananmen Square, and a tiny trickle of information about Tibet, coming from the censored version of Google.

In response, Google’s stock took a hit, but it’s coming back. Good on ya, Google.

Google starts to get its China, uh, stuff together

As a long-time Tibetan human rights supporter, it pleases me no end that Google seems to be having a change of heart.

Google lawyer David Drummond just posted this on the Official Google Blog:

In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google… we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists… we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers…

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Maybe I can go back to believing in Google’s original vision.

Internet will out – even in China

I just bumped into a fascinating story about normal people thumbing their noses at an oppresive government, censorship, and futility, all rolled up in a tale about the grass-mud horse.

(As a long-time supporter of Tibetan causes, the story couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time.)

Check out Michael Wines’ A Dirty Pun Tweaks China’s Online Censors in the New York Times.