There have been stories recently about Google bowing down to China’s demands on censorship and basically painting a picture of an Internet giant cowering and crawling back to China with its tail between its legs. So, I got curious and took a look.
Turns out that the story is not exactly true – spin.
If you visit Google China, it will seem as though the search giant has capitulated and will now continue to allow searches on its China website. However, when you try to do a search, you will be immediately redirected to it’s Hong Kong site.
So, instead of an automatic redirection previously, it is a manual redirection with a splash graphic that is designed to fool any cursory examination. Seems like Google is playing games with the Chinese government. It will be interesting to see how they react.