In a dramatic move, Google today started redirecting traffic from google.com to google.com.hk, from which it serves uncensored search results in simplified Chinese for users in mainland China.
This leaves Google’s services vulnerable to being blocked by the Chinese government. Google’s David Drummond (SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer) acknowledged this in today’s announcement:
“(…) we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues (…)”
As part of that monitoring, Google has set up a status page to record China service availability. Each service is associated with one of the following icons:
The services listed are Web search, Image search, YouTube, Sites, News, Ads, Docs, Gmail, Blogger, Picasa and Groups. Here’s how the status was displayed a few minutes ago:
[Via the Official Google Blog. Hat tip to Luke!]
[By Roger Browne | Origin: Google's China Service Availability Page | Comments]
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