After months of speculation over when–and if–Google would leave China, it appears Google has finally made a move: the search engine has stopped censoring its search results, seems to have shut down its mainland search engine, and is now redirecting Chinese searches through its Hong Kong server. “Google's China domain, Google.cn now re-directs to Google.com.hk. The switch means Google is no longer censoring search results for its Chinese visitors. Whether these Chinese visitors can actually access Google.com.hk is another matter.” reports Business Insider. Mashable and TechCrunch are also reporting that Google has shut down its China search site. Google has posted a blog regarding its approach in China. Google explains, “So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services–Google Search, Google News, and Google Images–on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. Due to the increased load on our Hong Kong servers and the complicated nature of these changes, users may see some slowdown in service or find some products temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over.” Google states that the decision to halt censoring search results and redirect users to Google.com.hk is linked to the hacking that took place earlier this year: '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,' Google writes. added by: UrbanGypsy
