7 ms·

google.cn now redirects to google.com.hk

81 points by keyist 17y ago

richardw 17y ago
My guess is that negotiations have produced this result: the Chinese government is going to (at some point) filter the results themselves, which lets both parties save face and lets Google continue basic business functions in China.
tshtf 17y ago
Results appear to be uncensored on the hk site: http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=tiananmen+square http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q...
- garply 17y ago
  http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=zh-CN&safe=strict&q=天安门+1989&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=zh-CN&safe=strict&#38... is now filtered for me (it wasn't a few days ago), but by my ISP, not by Google.
  - eob 17y ago
    What happens when your ISP filters it? Do you see a "Connection Reset" page, or do they actually modify the HTML returned?
    - garply 17y ago
      Connection reset... same as I get with blogspot, wordpress, facebook, twitter, etc.
toisanji 17y ago
What that means is that people in China will still not be able to see unfiltered results as the Chinese Hong Kong version is blocked from the mainland. Google Hong Kong is uncensored just like most of the world.
- garply 17y ago
  No, it's not blocked (yet) - but queries with certain keywords are being filtered as they always have. It appears the keyword filtering is now more severe, as I've mentioned elsewhere.
  - Herring 17y ago
    Why isn't everyone encrypting everything?
    - richardw 17y ago
      Probably not smart to tell the government you'd like to hide your comms from them. Although if everyone did (e.g. it was built into the browser) then it might be hard to figure out who to watch.
    - roundsquare 17y ago
      Really? As if most people even know then can, and if they do, they know how? Always good to remember that non-techies don't even know what options are available much less how to make use of them. Aside from that, I'd wonder if in China they are worried about getting caught and getting in trouble with the government.
      - chrischen 17y ago
        > Aside from that, I'd wonder if in China they are worried about getting caught and getting in trouble with the government. It's called being "harmonized." They joke about it, but not sure if it's a serious concern. Given their large population I doubt it.
      - Herring 17y ago
        Yeah cryptography is hard for users.. I was wondering why companies (eg google) don't use https everywhere.
        olefoo 17y ago
garply 17y ago
I'm curious how long I'll be able to access google.com.hk from my Beijing apartment.
- tshtf 17y ago
  I'm not sure if this is new, but Google has a page with availability details from China: http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en
pavs 17y ago
China service availability Status: http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en A new approach to China: an update: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china...
- garply 17y ago
  Both of those urls are blocked to me ("Connection was reset").
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - Groxx 17y ago
    Status page as of "now": http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/5748/screenshot01u.png http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/5748/screenshot01u.png Text content of the blog post (sans links): 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. So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—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 faced—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. In terms of Google's wider business operations, we intend to continue R&D work in China and also to maintain a sales presence there, though the size of the sales team will obviously be partially dependent on the ability of mainland Chinese users to access Google.com.hk. Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them. Despite all the uncertainty and difficulties they have faced since we made our announcement in January, they have continued to focus on serving our Chinese users and customers. We are immensely proud of them.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
ecq 17y ago
Google's stock price taking a nose dive. http://www.google.com/finance?q=Google http://www.google.com/finance?q=Google I don't know if this is a fiscally responsible thing to do for a public company. Google should've think twice before pulling out of China. Once they're out, they can't go back in again. Say goodbye to the (soon to be) largest and fastest growing market in the world.
noaccount 17y ago
Here is a screenshot: http://www.laigaogao.cn/index.php/archives/3367 http://www.laigaogao.cn/index.php/archives/3367
WingForward 17y ago
A re-direct to www.google.com.tw would have been interesting.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
  - tr4nslator 17y ago
    "Traditional Chinese characters are widely used, and are the de facto writing standard in Hong Kong." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Hong_Kong#Written_Chinese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Hong_Kong#Written_...
jpablo 17y ago
China blocking google.com.tw for everyone not in Taiwan in 3, 2, 1 ...
sigzero 17y ago
That is awesome. www.google.com.tw would have been better.

81 points by keyist 17y ago

My guess is that negotiations have produced this result: the Chinese government is going to (at some point) filter the results themselves, which lets both parties save face and lets Google continue basic business functions in China.

tshtf 17y ago

Results appear to be uncensored on the hk site: http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=tiananmen+square http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q...

garply 17y ago
http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=zh-CN&safe=strict&q=天安门+1989&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=zh-CN&safe=strict&#38... is now filtered for me (it wasn't a few days ago), but by my ISP, not by Google.
- eob 17y ago
  What happens when your ISP filters it? Do you see a "Connection Reset" page, or do they actually modify the HTML returned?
  - garply 17y ago
    Connection reset... same as I get with blogspot, wordpress, facebook, twitter, etc.

toisanji 17y ago

What that means is that people in China will still not be able to see unfiltered results as the Chinese Hong Kong version is blocked from the mainland. Google Hong Kong is uncensored just like most of the world.

garply 17y ago
No, it's not blocked (yet) - but queries with certain keywords are being filtered as they always have. It appears the keyword filtering is now more severe, as I've mentioned elsewhere.
- Herring 17y ago
  Why isn't everyone encrypting everything?
  - richardw 17y ago
    Probably not smart to tell the government you'd like to hide your comms from them. Although if everyone did (e.g. it was built into the browser) then it might be hard to figure out who to watch.
  - roundsquare 17y ago
    Really? As if most people even know then can, and if they do, they know how? Always good to remember that non-techies don't even know what options are available much less how to make use of them. Aside from that, I'd wonder if in China they are worried about getting caught and getting in trouble with the government.
    - chrischen 17y ago
      > Aside from that, I'd wonder if in China they are worried about getting caught and getting in trouble with the government. It's called being "harmonized." They joke about it, but not sure if it's a serious concern. Given their large population I doubt it.
    - Herring 17y ago
      Yeah cryptography is hard for users.. I was wondering why companies (eg google) don't use https everywhere.
      - olefoo 17y ago

garply 17y ago

I'm curious how long I'll be able to access google.com.hk from my Beijing apartment.

tshtf 17y ago
I'm not sure if this is new, but Google has a page with availability details from China: http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en

pavs 17y ago

China service availability Status: http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en A new approach to China: an update: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china...

garply 17y ago
Both of those urls are blocked to me ("Connection was reset").
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- Groxx 17y ago
  Status page as of "now": http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/5748/screenshot01u.png http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/5748/screenshot01u.png Text content of the blog post (sans links): 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. So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—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 faced—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. In terms of Google's wider business operations, we intend to continue R&D work in China and also to maintain a sales presence there, though the size of the sales team will obviously be partially dependent on the ability of mainland Chinese users to access Google.com.hk. Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them. Despite all the uncertainty and difficulties they have faced since we made our announcement in January, they have continued to focus on serving our Chinese users and customers. We are immensely proud of them.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

ecq 17y ago

Google's stock price taking a nose dive. http://www.google.com/finance?q=Google http://www.google.com/finance?q=Google I don't know if this is a fiscally responsible thing to do for a public company. Google should've think twice before pulling out of China. Once they're out, they can't go back in again. Say goodbye to the (soon to be) largest and fastest growing market in the world.

noaccount 17y ago

Here is a screenshot: http://www.laigaogao.cn/index.php/archives/3367 http://www.laigaogao.cn/index.php/archives/3367

WingForward 17y ago

A re-direct to www.google.com.tw would have been interesting.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
- tr4nslator 17y ago
  "Traditional Chinese characters are widely used, and are the de facto writing standard in Hong Kong." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Hong_Kong#Written_Chinese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Hong_Kong#Written_...

jpablo 17y ago

China blocking google.com.tw for everyone not in Taiwan in 3, 2, 1 ...

sigzero 17y ago

That is awesome. www.google.com.tw would have been better.