March 22, 2010, 5:53 PM — The Chinese government has now responded to Google's principled refusal to continue censoring the Internet in China.
Google's move is "totally wrong," said a government spokesman, described as the "official in charge of the Internet bureau under the State Council Information Office" through the official Chinese news agency Xinhua. Further, he said, "Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks."
The spokesman said: "This is totally wrong. We’re uncompromisingly opposed to the politicization of commercial issues, and express our discontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conducts."
Today at noon (Pacific), Google announced that "earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn." As a result, the post said, "users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk," which is the Hong Kong Google site, and which is uncensored.
Google's carefully worded blog post today is in my opinion, a humiliating slap in the face for the Chinese government, and leaves it with few options, all unacceptable. Here's why.
