more interesting will be the reaction of china now
since atm people can search by using google hk without anything being blocked
if we/chinese? are really lucky they might just leave it this way.
But I doubt it.

@maple: You do business with animals? Manor Farm?

Or, as a presumed Canuck (from the name), is 'business with animals' a euphemism involving sheep, perhaps. Little else makes sense.

ps YouTube and Facebook, to name but 2, have been blocked here in China for the past year. Minus YouTube is a pain, but minus Facebook is a blessed release.

@maple: Could you please elucidate your first comment in this thread?

Maybe China is right in trying to keep all the western crap where it belongs - in the west and out of our sight.

Timur, I get a vague sense of what your saying, that not having facebook is great because it was impossible to choose to just not use it... that everything Western is clearly 'crap'... mapleleaf was referring to your government, I suspect.

Yeah... while I'm not going to throw the word "animals" into the mix, I'm not a big fan of undemocratic government. I'm especially opposed to censorship, so I strongly support Google's stand.
It's a shame it took a direct attack on Google personally to goad it into making the stand, but I'll just accept that I'm happy they're doing something.

Yes, Google did the right thing, but their pull-out isn't actually going to faze China at all. Google was never really competitive in this market and probably wanted to pull out anyway, for commercial reasons.The small gap left behind is being filled as we speak.

The Great Firewall of China is, indeed, a mighty pain, but I don't see any way of bringing it down anytime soon. It would take a complete change of mindset on the part of the government, which is unlikely to happen. 'Googlegate' gives them the opportunity to convince themselves that they were right all along.

Censorship in China is an excuse ffor Google to withdraw. Google would give a shit about that if they had been successful on the Chinese market. But as a matter of fact, the Chinese prefer baidu.com over Google. That's why they pull out of China. Lamenting about censorship is just a pretext.

@TaoQiBao: Absolutely! That's what I was trying to say re Google. However, you still haven't addressed the censorship issue itself.

There is not much to say about the censorship issue, is there?

baidu.com is a cayman islands company - and google is right to deal with those animals - the human animals in China are just like the ones in America (well there are some serious cultural differences, but each to their own i say.)

and in defence of the Great firewall of china "The Chinese society has generally less information bearing capacity than developed countries such as the U.S..." (to quote http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90780/91344/6873383.html)

Google is now redirecting all traffic aimed at google.cn to coocle.com.hk - where there is no censorship (but it is still in china, so it seems for now they are operating within chinese law)

As for this being a political statement - i think google admits fully that it is, but not a statement pushed by the American government or anyone else, it is a retaliation by google againist attack made on the company by an unknown source (hacking into gmail accounts of chinese dissidents for one)

Google may be sceeding the territory of China in this war, in which case i would consider this a loss, but it is better to know where you stand rather than to pretend to be in a position of power and over-estimate yourself.

PS animals do not have souls, and we are animals.

About the censorship issue, the Chinese government has every right to censor things, that i would prefer they changed their policy isn't really important, it is up to the Chinese people to act for this change if they want it.

I'd love to contribute further to this wonderful discussion, but I'm doing my Falun Dafa exercises.