Starting today (23rd March 2010), users of Google.cn website will now taken to the Google.com.hk site as Mountain View, California-based company seeks to operate an uncensored service in China that won't infringe local laws, the Internet operator said.
As such, Mountain View had escalated a two-month censorship row with the government in the world's biggest Internet market yesterday by routing China-based subscribers to a search service on its Hong Kong site.Was this a good move by Google?
In my opinion, this is a clever-cum-tactical move by Google to takes on China, because the playing ground had swifted to Hong Kong now. And, this could inviting backlash from Hong Kong people, if China want to completely ousted Google out of its territory.
Remember, Hong Kong has a separate government and economy, though mainland authorities have exercised powers to reinterpret local statutes since 1997. China had promised to preserve Hong Kong's capitalist system and free press for a further 50 years, when handing over of sovereignty then. However, traffic redirected to Google's Hong Kong site was still subject to Chinese government filters today. Can Hong Kong out-spoken citizens live without Google?
To recap:
Google said on Jan.12 it was no longer willing to censor content on its Chinese site after it was targeted by cyber attacks from within China. Hackers obtained proprietary information and e-mail data of some human rights activists in a "highly sophisticated attack", said Google. Clearly, Google is upset with the move by "Chinese hackers" or "hackers of China".
Disclaimer: This article is purely of personal opinions with no intention of biased to neither party.
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