Most
observers expect China to block Google's redirect of its mainland search
engine to Hong Kong. If that happens, where does that leave the search
giant in terms of Android and its other business interests there?
Google is not backing down from its efforts to
provide uncensored search results in China and has begun offering them
via clever workaround.
Datamation reports on the fallout
from Google's decision to offer uncensored results and what it
could mean to its business interests there including Android for mobile
devices.
Someone at Google must be watching the March Madness NCAA basketball tournament, because that was quite a good head fake move the company made on the Chinese government.
After declaring it was prepared to shut down its Chinese search engine rather than adhere to continued censorship restrictions on search results, Google surprised everyone by taking a different path. On Monday, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced it was redirecting search traffic at its Google.cn site on the mainland to Google.com.hk in Hong Kong, where China doesn't enforce the same censorship rules.
The move was immediately blasted by Chinese officials. In making the announcement, Google said it realizes the Chinese government may respond by blocking access to the Hong Kong site. In fact, the government wasted no time blocking results and links to what it considers objectionable content, just as it had for Google.cn. in.