Google stops filtering search results in China

Did you know that if you search for ‘Tiannamen Square’ in China you don’t get any results regarding the massacre that occured there?  In fact there is a ton of search terms that Google has to hide from users in China which is enforced by the Chinese government.  But, since it was determined that the Chinese government and military were behind the hacking incidents that have happened at Google, Adobe and several other US companies Google has been threatening to take the gloves off and stop filtering search results in China.

Google has released the following response today:

[E]arlier today we stopped censoring our search servicesâ??Google Search, Google News, and Google Imagesâ??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.

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. 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 facedâ??it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, and have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China.

Good for you Google.

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