Google.cn is now redirected to google.com.hk. It is a clear message from Google, which I quote:
On January 12, we announced on this blog that Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China, and that during our investigation into these attacks we had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers. 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. … Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. 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. –Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html
The motivation for this move is straightforward: The cyber attacks from China on those Gmail accounts, and the non-negotiable legal requirement for self-censorship to operate in China. The result is also clear: > 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.
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Well, there are still certain logic inferences I have to make myself clear. The simplest fact that can be established is that: there WAS censorship in Google.cn search results in the past. Google is fully aware of this. I am also not THAT naive to believe that the cracking on Gmail accounts just occurred this once in last December. My questions will be: why Google decided to pull out NOW? What is acutally Google trying to defend and preserve? Well, it is obviously not the censorship thing as we all know Google.cn has been running under censorship for years. It is the cracking issue, aka, intrusion to personal privacy that Google really wants to defend. And there is no crystal clear relationship between censorship and cracking! I mean, cracking does not necessarily mean a search engine should run under censorship or un-censorship! Will the move of Google.cn to google.com.hk help to stop the cracking? I don\’t think so. Besides, the Google mail service is all the while being served outside of China. THE LOGIC SIMPLY DOES NOT FOLLOW.
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I can\’t stop myself from imaging this scene inside of my head. It is from the famous trilogy by Italo Calvino Our Ancestors: The Baron in the Trees （I nostri antenati）, that wonderful, admirable, unique boy: Kozmo (I am not if my spelling is correct). He decided to move onto the tree and never touch the ground again after some quarrel with his family. Well, I do believe, Kozmo\’s move is more logical.
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Nevertheless, I still admire Google\’s boldness in making this decision. A uncensored search engine will allow me to explore more when I want. It is definitely a right thing to do for any search engine. We are now more and more dependent on search engines and the sites a good search engine recommends when we key in a phrase. This is remarkable. As my wife had correctly pointed out, after my purchasing of one dictionary and one encyclopedia, Who is reading these books now? Yes, she is absolutely right. I am depending on a good search engine, in most of the cases which is Google, to provide me the righteous results. Now I am even happier to learn that it is not censored anymore. Being transparent is the first and perhaps the most important step to take to Be No Evil. Censorship is evil by itself so applying censorship is helping to do evil. And in Chinese, we have an idiom for that: 为虎作伥 , which can be translated as: after being eaten by a tiger, you still serve the tiger to help him to hunt for more innocent people. Transparancy has never become so important in such a enclosed, corrupted land. It has proven itself to be a great and efficient tool. It just reminds me another theme from another famous writer, Milan Kundera. In his novel Immortality, when at the end, he wrote about how Agnes yearned to hold a piece of Forget-Me-Not in her hand as the last, un-noticed symbol of beauty. Transparent is beautiful.
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