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Commentary Begins On Google's China Shutdown:

Facing an uncooperative and arguably unethical Chinese government, Google on Monday moved to shut down Google.cn and reroute users to Google.hk.

Google thought its solution "would give China the possibility to save face, and give [Google] a way... to save face," Gartner analyst Whit Andrews tells eWeek . Alas, "It doesn't look like it's working." Google's goal was to do an end-run around China's censorship laws, according to Search Engine Land 's Danny Sullivan, but its efforts were premature."

Google's Sergey Brin now believes that the US government should make fighting Chinese censorship a high priority, is disappointed with Microsoft for continuing to censor and is surprised that some question Google's sudden U-turn in China," muses Sullivan. "I'd say Google needs to get a little time under its belt being outside of China and setting a true example for others to follow, if it really wants to be taken seriously and demonstrate leadership."

According to The Guardian, "The Obama administration has been playing down the growing conflict between [Google] and the Chinese authorities, suggesting that the relationship between the two countries is 'mature enough to sustain differences.'"

This most recent rift between the Chinese authorities and Google stems from a massive cyber-attack, which exposed the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

What followed was two months of negotiations between Chinese officials and Google over government censorship. Last week, the talks appeared to have reached gridlock, with Chinese authorities telling Google's partners to comply with government censorship laws or face the consequences.

Adding insult to injury, unconfirmed reports circulated Wednesday morning that Google's corporate site had been hacked. "Users who searched Google for 'Google executives' were taken to a page in which all the information was in Chinese," reported The L.A. Times.

A Google spokesman denied that the site had been hacked, telling the Times, "This is not a hack but rather a bug affecting the language displayed to some users, and we are working to fix it soon."

Read the whole story at L.A. Times »

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