Google has informed users in China that it has enabled uncensored access to its internet search engine in Chinese by redirecting them to Google’s page in Hong Kong, reports BBC.
The company states that the website in Hong Kong is specifically designed for users in mainland China and that it will carefully monitor attempts to restrict access. Some correspondents believe that this move by Google represents a compromise that could fail if Chinese authorities decide to block access to the Hong Kong site. Google threatened to withdraw from China, the largest global internet market, after a sophisticated cyber attack on Google’s computers was detected in January, with traces of the attack leading back to China. During that attack, Google lost part of its intellectual property and claimed that the email addresses of Gmail’s human rights activists were hacked. Google first signed an agreement to enter the Chinese market back in 2006 and faced criticism for agreeing to the Chinese authorities’ request to remove anything that official Beijing deemed inappropriate from search results. Although Google is the most popular internet search engine in the world, it lags behind the local Baidu in China. (G. J.)
