Google officially announced today on their blog that they will no longer be censoring search results in China. Google's china domain (google.cn) is being redirected to their Hong Kong-based site (google.com.hk).
From the Google blog:
On January 12, we announced on this blog that Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China, and that during our investigation into these attacks we had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers. We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered—combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger—had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn
I applaud this win for free speech, though it may be largely symbolic, as China could block access to all features of the google.com.hk domain. Already, China blocks YouTube and Blogger content on the Hong Kong domain. And human rights activists in China are still at risk of government hacking of their private information. Nonetheless, I'm encouraged to see a public company making sacrifices that few other companies (or countries, for that matter) have been willing to do.
From Khürt L Williams on March 24, 2010 :: 8:14 pm
China has already started blocking access to Google in Hong Kong.
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