San Francisco: Google has moved its Chinese-language search engine site to Hong Kong and stopped censoring its Chinese search results, the company announced on Monday.
The move came after the web search giant announced on January 12 that it would stop censoring its Chinese search results after discovering a cyber attack that originated in China and which was aimed at compromising Chinese human rights activists.
"Earlier today we stopped censoring our search services - Google Search, Google News, and Google Images on Google.cn," the company said on its official Google blog. "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."
The company said it would continue to conduct research and development work in China and also continue to operate its advertising sales teams in the country.
"Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard," Google's chief legal officer David Drummond said. "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."
Google added that it will create a new web page that will track which Google services are available in China, and which are being blocked by the Chinese government.
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