One could argue they may have purposely done it this way to protect the Chinese staff from blame for this decision, hoping that the Chinese gov't wouldn't prose

One could argue they may have purposely done it this way to protect the Chinese staff from blame for this decision, hoping that the Chinese gov't wouldn't prosecute Google.CN staff because the "fault" for the decision lies back in the USA. (FWIW, some reports say Google.cn already is uncensored, which may be against the law. Thus the staff could be at risk.)