Google begins Long March against Chinese censorship

Hazel Rycroft

GOOGLE has been true to its word and quit the mainland market as it said it would if it was required to continue to submit to censorship, after cyberattacks originating in China.

Users in China noticed small differences today after Google closed its China-hosted google.cn search engine. People are now automatically redirected to the Chinese-language service based in Hong Kong, where Google is not legally required to censor searches.

The responsibility for censoring has now shifted from Google’s China operation, to the Chinese authorities. While Google may have stopped censoring its results in its move to Hong Kong, the Chinese government has not.

The censorship system consists of controls on the content posted inside the country, and the "great firewall" prevents mainland users from reading material hosted overseas. This “great firewall” is controlled by Internet police who blacklist domain names, keywords and IP addresses, when it finds any it breaks the connection. 

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