Google redirects its China website to Hong Kong

It has been touted for the last few months, after weeks of negotiations and disagreement it has finally happened, Google has shut down its Google.cn website opting to redirect its users to Google.com.hk (Hong Kong site).

Announced on Monday, Google will now once again offer uncensored Chinese language search services via the Hong Kong site. There was a lot of rumour and debate that Google might leave China entirely but they have taken the wise decision to maintain a sales office there as well as a research and development organisation.

This represents the fact that they have not fallen out completely with the Chinese government which they have at times been at risk of doing during the negotiations. Google still has a lot to gain from being in China as do China from having them there.

“Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard,” Google said in a statement. “We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced–it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China.”

This has been an obvious eventuality since the start of the year when Google announced that it would no longer censor its search results in China and that if this was to remain an issue with the government they would simply shut down Google.cn.

This seems to be the best solution for both Google and the Chinese government as it allows Google to keep its presence in China and ensures that the Chinese people will not go with out the services that Google provides.

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